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THE 

HISTORY OF INDIANA 

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 



BY 



CHARLES W. MOORES 

AUTHOR OF 

The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Boys and Girls 

The L'fe of Christopher Columbus for 

Boys and Girls 




BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
(£bc RiticrsiDc press Cambciboe 



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CONTENTS 

I. In the Wilderness l 

II. Indians and Pioneers 12 

III. Birth of the State 2 3 

IV. The New Capital 33 

V. Indiana before the War 4 2 

VI. War-Time and After 53 

VII. The Hoosier 62 



COPYRIGHT, I916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 




SEP -5 1916 



3>CI.A4:{7527 

Ov4> / , 



THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE WILDERNESS 

i. The Indian inhabitants and the coming of the French. 

Indiana became one of the United States in 1816. Her first 
white visitors a century and a half earlier, under the leader- 
ship of the French explorer La Salle, found here a wooded 
wilderness in the undisturbed possession of Indians, who 
lived on such products of the soil as they could cultivate 
without tools and on the game they secured with traps and 
arrows. Soon the Jesuit missionaries began to come, one at 
a time, entering the Indiana country from Lake Erie by 
way of the Maumee River, carrying their light canoes over 
a nine-mile portage through the woods near what is now 
Fort Wayne, and reembarking upon the Wabash River to 
follow it to its mouth. Other adventurous French priests 
found their way from the northeast to the headwaters of the 
Ohio River, and, drifting with its rapid current as far as the 
Illinois border, pushed up the Wabash to where Lafayette 
now stands. To their superiors in Quebec and in far-off 
France these devoted men carried back their story of a race 
of intelligent and hospitable natives who lived in the rich 
Indiana valleys and had not yet begun to hate or fear the 
white invader. 

Following the trail of these early missionaries, but drawn 
by the spirit of adventure and the love of gain, there came 
next the forest rangers and fur traders to live among the 
natives, in Indian fashion, and engage in commerce with 
them. These first fur traders were hospitably received, as 
the missionaries had been, for they came with no thought of 
settlement and their coming did not threaten the expulsion 



2 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

of the natives. But while they kept the good-will of the In- 
dians, they brought the beginning of trouble, for they taught 
the red men of the West the use of firearms and the taste of 
whiskey. 

To the wilderness of Indiana and the prairies of Illinois, 
discovered by La Salle in the seventeenth century and 
visited by French missionaries and French fur traders, the 
crown of France at once laid claim. In due time log forts 
were built along the Wabash and the banner of France was 
flung to the breeze to tell of King Louis's sovereignty and 
to warn English explorers and settlers to keep away. These 
forts at Miamis (near Fort Wayne) and Ouiatanon (near 
Lafayette) and Vincennes were trading posts rather than 
fortifications, and here French adventurer and Indian trader 
met upon friendly terms beneath a flag whose real mean- 
ing the red men never understood. 

2. Beginning of British rule. As a result of the French- 
and-Indian Wars in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
France lost her American possessions east of the Missis- 
sippi River. Her flag came down from the little log forts in 
the Wabash Valley and in Illinois and her control over all 
the western territory passed into British hands. 

At that time in what is now Indiana there were only a few 
thousand Indians. Some of these lived in a handful of vil- 
lages, less than half a dozen in number; others ranged the 
forest at large. All of them lived north of the Wabash. The 
only white families were those of the French traders who 
gathered for protection at Post Ouiatanon and at Vincennes. 
Not more than eight hundred white people called Indiana 
their home. 

With the beginning of British rule after the treaty of 
l 7&3i good feeling between Indians and the whites ended 
in the Northwest. The American pioneers, British subjects, 
began to build homes in the wilderness. This meant the 
cutting-down of the forests, the seizure of the land, the 
conversion of boundless hunting grounds into farms and 
settlements, and in time, the expulsion of the Indians. 



IN THE WILDERNESS 3 

3. Life among the British pioneers. The change from 
French to British rule was a gradual one. The frontier was 
not attractive to the British military governors who came 
to Indiana to stay among a people whom they did not under- 
stand and for whom they had little sympathy. The Indians 
had reason to hate their new rulers; and the French, simple- 
minded, easy-going, and usually illiterate, seemed to the 
British to be wholly bad. Evil as was the first British opin- 
ion of the people in the Wabash country, the grave danger 
of disease, particularly of malaria, added still more to the 
discontent of the British newcomers in the performance of 
their governmental duties. Thomas Hutchins reported to 
the Government in 1768: " The fever and ague has raged 
with such uncommon violence as to put it out of our power 
to do scarce anything more than to bury some of our new 
officers and men." And Lieutenant Fraser described the 
Indians as " cruel, treacherous and cowardly," and the 
French traders as " unconscientious rascals " with an 
uncanny power over the Indians and a " passion for drunk- 
enness." 

Doubtless many of the fur traders were a hard lot and in 
their intimate life among the savages had debased both 
their Indian associates and themselves. But the Vincennes 
French lived a harmless and a happy life and gave to the 
old trading settlement a distinct charm, as if a bit of pro- 
vincial France had been transplanted to the wilderness. 

The dress of these pioneers was more elaborate than that 
of their Indian neighbors, but the men went barefoot and 
were content with leather trousers and hunting shirt, held 
together by a belt of the same material. Their society dress 
substituted for the belt a gayly beaded broad sash. The 
women wore a skirt to the knees which revealed below a 
petticoat of bright colors extending to the ankles. 

Feast days and holidays were many, and games and 
dances and music, especially in the winter time, made life 
in this little French community a less solemn affair than 
it was to the Americans who came to live among them. 



4 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

4. The Indians become hostile. Firearms and whiskey 
made dangerous neighbors of the once friendly Indians. 
The missionary priests, even with the support of the hand- 
ful of French settlers about the trading posts, found it im- 
possible to civilize the Indians or to keep their confidence, 
while increasing numbers of lawless forest rangers and 
trappers were teaching them intemperance and dishonesty 
and vice. Friendship between the races disappeared and 
the lonely log cabin in the forest became the pioneer's 
castle, fortified against Indian treachery and watched over 
as far as possible, when danger threatened, by the garri- 
son at the once peaceful trading posts. As the subjects of 
King George III came in increasing numbers, the Indians, 
already suspicious and unfriendly, were encouraged by 
their French friends to a more open hostility against the 
English. 

5. The Revolutionary War unites the American and 
French settlers. South of the Ohio, emigrants from Vir- 
ginia had been moving across the mountains into Kentucky, 
and had opened up little settlements as far in the interior 
as the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville. 

The Revolutionary War came on. Three years of unsuc- 
cessful fighting in the seaboard States had brought little 
encouragement to the American army. But in 1778 the 
treaty between the United States and France gave to Wash- 
ington a new French army and the promise of money to 
keep up the war. 

The news of the French alliance as it reached the frontier 
gave to the old French settlers and their newer American 
neighbors a common interest in resisting British rule, and 
put it into the heads of the pioneers to send to Virginia for 
help in expelling the common enemy. Fort Sackville, as 
the Vincennes post was now called, had become the center 
from which Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British military 
governor, hired Indians to go out among the homes along 
the Kentucky border, burning property and bringing in the 
scalps of American settlers. 



IN THE WILDERNESS 5 

6. The settlers appeal to Virginia for help against the 
British. The Virginia emigrants, whose families were vic- 
tims of these raids into the Kentucky country, naturally 
deemed the defense of their homes as important as the 
military operations in the East, and they sent the best- 
known of their young woodsmen, George Rogers Clark, 
a frontier surveyor, back to old Virginia as a member of 
her legislature, and charged him especially with the duty 
of securing military protection. 

Clark was more than the emissary of a defenseless peo- 
ple. He was a modest young man twenty-five years old, 
tall and strong and dignified as the Indians whom he under- 
stood so well, and with a power of endurance and a heart of 
courage that any Indian might have envied; and he knew 
the wilderness by heart. 

The Virginia legislature having adjourned, he submitted 
to Governor Patrick Henry the necessity for the defense 
of the Kentucky frontier, and then demonstrated his own 
secret plan for wresting the Northwest Territory from the 
English by the capture of the wilderness forts along the 
Wabash and at Kaskaskia on the Mississippi. Although 
scarcely more than a boy, Clark had the confidence and 
friendship of Thomas Jefferson, and was able to command 
a sympathetic hearing from Governor Henry. Out of it 
all came two letters of instruction from the Virginia gov- 
ernor, a public letter commissioning Clark as lieutenant- 
colonel to raise troops for service in Kentucky, and a secret 
letter authorizing the enlistment of three hundred and fifty 
men " to attack the British post at Kaskaskia " and erect 
a new military post at Louisville. Still a third letter, signed 
by Thomas Jefferson and others, promised to the soldiers 
who would enlist a liberal grant out of the land which they 
might conquer " in the country now in the possession of 
the Indians, if they are so fortunate to succeed." 

7. George Rogers Clark's campaign against the British. 
Full as the story of the American Revolution is of splendid 
sacrifice and romantic adventure, no campaign among them 



6 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

all, not even that of Valley Forge, involved greater suffer- 
ing or called for finer courage than the journey of George 
Rogers Clark and his little army into the wilderness, and 
their conquest from Great Britain of the great Northwest 
Territory, out of which came the States of Wisconsin, Michi- 
gan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and part of Minnesota. 

When Clark's men reached the Falls of the Ohio with the 
powder and supplies Virginia had given them at Pittsburg, 
they left their families on Corn Island. Then the force, one 
hundred and seventy-five strong, embarked, and — to the 
terror of the superstitious among them — shot the Falls 
of the Ohio just as a total eclipse of the sun came on. The 
soldiers kept to their boats until they neared the Illinois 
country, when they left their little fleet. Then, without wagons 
or horses to carry their military equipment, they started on a 
tramp of a hundred and twenty miles through the bottom- 
less prairie mire and over an unknown wilderness of woods, 
streams, and swamp to the settlement at Kaskaskia. This 
journey they covered in a week, and relying, as they knew 
they could, on the encouragement of the French inhabitants, 
they hid until midnight, when they slipped into the fort and 
surprised the British commandant, Philip Rocheblave, in 
his sleep. Clark's own history of the incident is brief: " I 
broke into the fort and secured the governor." The fort 
with all its supplies fell into Clark's hands without the firing 
of a shot, and with it the command of the Mississippi River 
at that point. 

8. Clark wins the support of the French settlers and the 
Indians. Clark easily won the allegiance of the French 
settlers at Kaskaskia when he explained to a group of their 
frightened leaders that, although prisoners of the American 
army, they would be freed and given " all the privileges of 
our government" and the secure possession of all their 
property, if they would agree to espouse the American 
cause. The parish priest, Father Pierre Gibault, was the 
one leader on whom they all relied, and when he asked per- 
mission to assemble his people in the church and decide 



IN THE WILDERNESS 7 

what to do, Clark gave his consent and assured Father 
Gibault that the religion and the personal welfare of his 
people would not be disturbed. This converted the priest 
into an active supporter of the American cause. 

A short and successful campaign followed against the 
other forts along the Mississippi farther north and opened 
the way for the taking of Vincennes. Father Gibault, full 
of enthusiasm for the American cause, agreed to attempt 
a parochial visit to the little settlement on the Wabash, and 
taking Dr. Jean Lafont with him as Clark's representative, 
succeeded so well that Gibault's friends at Vincennes raised 
the American flag over the settlement, and converted the 
fort, temporarily abandoned by its English governor, into 
an American post. 

Thus far the conquest of the Northwest had called for no 
righting. Endurance and diplomacy had brought success. 
Clark had readily won the support of the French, partly 
because of their dislike of the English, but quite as much 
because of his own attractive personality and his tact and 
wisdom in dealing with simple and straightforward men. 
He knew that if the British garrison should return, he could 
not hope to hold Vincennes without a fight, for he had left 
only one man in charge and one private soldier with him. 
Moreover, he had reason to fear that the Indians of the 
Wabash country might join the British forces and drive the 
Americans back to Kentucky. With the same diplomacy 
which had won him the French support, he went to work to 
arrange an alliance with the Indians and to assure their 
neutrality in the coming struggles with the English. It is 
strange that he succeeded, for he had no money and could 
not offer any of the gifts with which the favor of the In- 
dians had always to be bought. 

9. A winter of hardships. Meanwhile Governor Hamilton 
at Detroit had learned of the loss of Kaskaskia and Vin- 
cennes, and in the early winter brought a force of some six 
hundred men down the Wabash and recaptured the fort 
from Clark's garrison of two men. 



8 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

When the news reached Clark that the British had re- 
turned and retaken Fort Sackville, his situation was des- 
perate. He was in the heart of the wilderness, with the 
enemy in overwhelming numbers between him and the 
Kentucky frontier. The period of enlistment had expired 
and his men were free to return to Virginia. Many of them 
were eager to do so. His French allies, although friendly, 
were naturally discouraged over Governor Hamilton's re- 
turn. Winter had brought new dangers, for the Wabash was 
in flood and the prairies for miles on each side were covered 
with water and ice. There was no game, for the waters had 
driven animal life back to higher land. The food supply 
was nearly gone. His little army of Americans and French 
was not strong enough to meet the enemy, and there was no 
hope of reenforcement from far-off Virginia. He made up 
his mind that the apparent impossibility of the undertaking 
would prove his greatest safeguard, and he determined to 
defy the midwinter ice and flood and take the British by 
surprise. 

Clark had the qualities of a great general, for by means of 
spies he kept himself always informed of the position and 
strength of the enemy, while at the same time with marvel- 
ous skill he kept the enemy in ignorance of what he was 
doing. To take Fort Sackville called for more than courage. 
It required the genius of generalship. The odds against 
Clark were such that before he could surprise the British by 
an assault he must learn all he could about the state of 
affairs within the fort. 

In this crisis a new-found friend came to his help just as 
Father Gibault had done before. Colonel Francis Vigo, a 
Spanish veteran trading at St. Louis, volunteered to visit 
the British post and secure the desired information. Vigo 
succeeded in getting himself taken as a prisoner of war, 
but by the help of his French friends at Vincennes secured 
his freedom and returned to Clark with the much-needed 
information that Hamilton was in winter quarters, and, ex- 
pecting no trouble, had let many of his men go until the 



IN THE WILDERNESS 9 

return of spring would enable them to commence their cam- 
paign against the Americans. 

It was now February and Clark realized that the sur- 
prise he had planned must fail unless carried out at once. 

To carry the heavier stores of ammunition and supplies 
the Americans built a large boat, equipped it with two four- 
pound cannon and four large swivel guns and put it in 
charge of Lieutenant Rogers. " The vessel," Clark re- 
ported afterwards, " was much admired by the inhabitants, 
as no such thing had been seen in the country before. 
Many, anxious to retrieve their characters, turned out, 
and the ladies began also to be spirited and interest them- 
selves in the expedition, which had great effect on the young 
men." Recruits were secured from the French of Kaskaskia 
and the vicinity and the boat was sent by the Mississippi 
and Ohio to wait at a point below Vincennes for Clark's 
little army to arrive overland. 

Good Father Gibault and a crowd of his French parish- 
ioners escorted the land party out of the town, and the 
priest, " after a suitable discourse to the purpose," Clark 
writes, " gave us all absolution. We set out on a forlorn 
hope, indeed, for our whole party, with the boat's crew, 
consisted of only a little upwards of two hundred." 

At the very start of their two-hundred-and-forty-mile 
journey they found floods everywhere. Clark's " greatest 
care was to divert the men as much as possible in order to 
keep up their spirits." The last nine miles was flooded 
all the way. The food had given out on February 18, and 
the water for four miles was breast-high and full of ice. The 
hunger and pain these men suffered for four weary days 
threw them into despair. They could not safely retreat, 
and the thought of an assault upon the British fort on the 
farther bank of the Wabash filled them with terror. 

A little drummer boy twelve years old saved the day, for 
when Colonel Clark mounted the lad on the shoulders of a 
stalwart Virginia trooper six feet two in height and bade him 
beat the charge upon his drum, the boy fell to with such 



io THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

spirit that Clark drew his sword and plunged breast deep 
into the freezing flood with the command, Forward march! 
and the little army of pioneers forgot their cold and hunger 
and laughed at their quaint musician as they followed on. 

At last, on the 24th of February, 1779, Vincennes was 
reached and, preparatory to the assault, the good-will of 
the French inhabitants was assured. Without disclosing 
how absurdly small his " army " was, Clark wrote to Gov- 
ernor Hamilton demanding the surrender of Fort Sackville, 
and adding, " Beware of destroying stores of any kind that 
are in your possession; for, by Heaven, if you do, there 
shall be no mercy shown you." 

10. The British governor surrenders. The battle was 
fought. The American pioneers were masters of the rifle, 
and their every shot reached its mark. Inside the fort, 
Hamilton, ignorant of the enemy's strength, but imagining 
himself greatly outnumbered, spent the evening playing 
cards with his prisoner, Captain Helm, Clark's commandant 
during the few weeks of the American possession in the 
early winter. One of Clark's men, knowing where Helm's 
quarters were, amused himself by firing his bullets so they 
would knock the clay from the chimney into the apple toddy 
which Helm was sure to have standing upon his hearth. 
Captain Helm felt the humor of the situation and tried to 
prepare for the morrow's surrender by convincing his Brit- 
ish captor that not even a tankard of toddy was safe against 
a Kentuckian's marksmanship. 

Outside the fort the Americans had not forgotten that 
Governor Hamilton was the man who had hired the In- 
dians to raid the Kentucky border, and with scalping knife 
and tomahawk and firebrand, to make of that country what 
its name signified, " the dark and bloody ground." As they 
at last had found their opportunity to avenge the sorrows of 
their own people, they fought to win. After eighteen hours' 
resistance, on February 25 Governor Hamilton surrendered 
the fort and all of his supplies and was sent to Virginia as 
a prisoner of war. 



IN THE WILDERNESS n 

ii. The Northwest Territory becomes a part of the 
United States. The surrender of Fort Sackville was the 
beginning of the end. Between Vincennes and Detroit, up 
the Wabash Valley, a few scattering posts still remained 
under British control, but they soon passed into the hands 
of the Americans, and the War of the American Revolu- 
tion, so far as the territory northwest of the Ohio River was 
concerned, was over. The territory, by the generalship of 
George Rogers Clark and the courage of his men, became 
a possession of the State of Virginia, and, for all time, a 
part of the United States. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 

1. What years are covered by this chapter? 

2. What four classes of French people came to that part of the country 
that is now called Indiana? 

3. Review in your history the account of the Jesuit missionaries and 
give the story of one of them. 

4. Make a list of all the places mentioned in this chapter and locate 
them on the map. 

5. What influence did Patrick Henry have in bringing on the Revolu- 
tion? 

6. What three men were most prominent in wresting the Northwest 
Territory from the British? 

7. Why did the Northwest Territory become a possession of Virginia 
rather than of some other State? 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Write an account of the life of a French or English family settled in 
the Northwest Territory at the time of George Rogers Clark. 

2. Write the conversation, as it might have taken place, between Clark 
and Governor Patrick Henry when Clark applied for help in taking 
the Northwest Territory from the British. 



CHAPTER II 

INDIANS AND PIONEERS 

12. The Indians become weakened and hostile by con- 
tact with white people. The only people who ever kept up 
neighborly relations with the Indians in the Wabash coun- 
try were the French. Through all the years the French 
forest rangers, fur traders, priests, and even settlers con- 
tinued to be their friends. Many of the French fur traders 
married Indian women and settled down to a half-civilized 
life among the natives. Between the two races there was no 
reason for misunderstanding, for the French did not covet 
the Indian lands and had no thought of crowding the Indians 
out. But as the American colonists began to settle in the 
wilderness, the French and Indians alike foresaw the inevi- 
table breaking-up of their fur trade and the destruction of 
their vast hunting grounds. 

In France's war with England over their American bound- 
aries the Indians naturally joined with their friends the 
French and fought the invading Americans in the savage 
fashion, making occasional forays into the white settle- 
ments to destroy property and frighten the settlers away. 

Later, when the American colonies rebelled against Eng- 
lish rule, the English soldiers upon the frontier hired the 
Indians to wage a terrorizing war against the Americans. 
This, as we have seen, was kept up until the influence of the 
French in the latter part of the Revolution softened the 
hostility of the savages. 

But through a century of contact with the whites the red 
men had sunk lower and lower. Fighting the white man's 
wars and drinking his liquor took from the Indian all the 
respect and love he once had for his white neighbor. The 
new settler encountered a different sort of Indian from the 



INDIANS AND PIONEERS 13 

kind the early French priest and trapper had lived with. 
Enmity between the races was established and the immi- 
grants who came thronging into the new territory came 
determined to expel the Indians, either by treaty or by the 
rifle. 

13. General St. Claims defeat. Indian depredations in- 
creased and the cry of distress went up from the scattered 
settlements north of the Ohio and along the entire Ken- 
tucky border. A little army of fourteen hundred untrained 
soldiers was sent by President Washington into the heart 
of the Indian country, under the command of General 
Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, 
with instructions to suppress the Indian uprisings and if 
possible frighten the savages into accepting terms of peace. 
St. Clair's campaign ended with a single short battle on the 
Ohio line, near the headwaters of the Wabash. Chiefs Blue 
Jacket and Little Turtle with their braves surrounded the 
American camp in the night, and in the early morning of 
November 4, 1791, began the slaughter. Of two hundred 
and fifty women who had come to share with their husbands 
the dangers of the campaign, only a few escaped with the 
surviving remnant of St. Clair's army. 

14. General Wayne's victory and the founding of the 
city of Fort Wayne. This defeat to the American arms made 
all efforts toward peace impossible for a time. The Indian 
outrages continued for three years until General Anthony 
Wayne, with a much stronger army, again met Little 
Turtle and his braves near the head of the Maumee River 
and fought and won the battle of Fallen Timbers. 

The Indians had been encouraged in their warfare by the 
British, who, in spite of the Treaty of 1783, were still trying 
to hold a part of the Northwest Territory, but Wayne's 
victory had its effect upon the savages and quieted the 
activities of their British allies. From his headquarters at 
Fort Defiance, a few miles to the east, Wayne sent to the 
defeated enemy this warning against their British allies: 
11 Brothers, be no longer led astray by the false promises of 



14 



THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 



the bad white men at the foot of the Rapids, for they have 
neither the power nor the inclination to protect you." He 
at once built a fort at the head of the Maumee River, in 
order to secure the fruits of his victory and stop the en- 
croachments of the meddling British. The fort was called 
Fort Wayne in his honor, and became the site of an impor- 
tant and growing city of the same name. 




Courtesy Hyman-Coitman Centennial History af Indian 
AN OLD VIEW OF FORT WAYNE 

Erected in 1704 by order of General Wayne. Across the Maumee just below this fort was fought the 
disastrous battle between General Harmar's men and Chief Little Turtle's Miarnia in 1790 



15. The Treaty of Greenville. In June. 1795, General 
Wayne called the chiefs together at Greenville, Ohio, to 
conclude a treaty of peace. This treaty gave to the whites 
all the Indian lands in Ohio to the south and east of Green- 
ville, and in Indiana a wedge-shaped strip east of a line 
running from Greenville to the mouth of the Kentucky 
River, besides Clark's Grant, opposite Louisville, Kentucky, 
and a few small parcels already occupied by the whites at 
Fort Wayne, Ouiatanon, and Vincennes. When Wayne 
dismissed the peace council he made a farewell speech to the 



INDIANS AND PIONEERS 15 

tribes in which he said: " I fervently pray the Great Spirit 
that the peace now established may be permanent and hold 
us together in the bonds of friendship until time shall be no 
more." But his prayer was not to be granted, for Indian 
wars and periods of peace, turn about, continued until the 
year 1818, when the entire State of Indiana was at last 
thrown open for settlement and the removal of all the more 
important tribes to the west of the Mississippi made the 
new country a safe place for the home-builders from the 
South and East who were waiting, eager to "go in and 
possess the land." 

16. Revolutionary veterans settle in the West. The end- 
ing of the Revolutionary War had released a vast army from 
military duty. These veterans were young men who had 
been following Washington and his generals for eight years. 
They were used to hardships of all kinds, fond of the out- 
of-doors, and responsive to the spirit of adventure. As the 
army disbanded the men found themselves out of employ- 
ment and out of funds. The Continental Congress had no 
money to pay their long delinquent wages, but it began to 
plan for discharging its heavy debt by promising them 
homestead lands at a nominal price in the new Northwest 
whenever the Indians could be induced to give up their 
hunting grounds and go beyond the Mississippi River. 

Without waiting to secure the consent of the Indians the 
Government confirmed the gift by Virginia to the men who 
had taken Kaskaskia and Vincennes and gave them a whole 
county of rich forest lands known as " Clark's Grant," at 
the very spot north of the Falls of the Ohio where George 
Rogers Clark and his men had left their families in 1779 
and undertaken the conquest of the wilderness. 

Southern Ohio, along the river, was taken first, and every- 
body, in Congress and out, bought land. President Wash- 
ington himself took up several thousand acres as far west 
as the present eastern boundary of Indiana. 

17. Two streams of immigrants. As the Indians began to 
move farther back, a flood of emigration, gathering along 



16 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

the Atlantic seaboard, found its way through the Wilder- 
ness Trail into Kentucky and thence northward, and down 
the Ohio into Indiana and Illinois. A smaller stream of 
emigration followed the Great Lakes and the Maumee 
River into the Wabash Valley, and from Lake Michigan 
into the valleys of the St. Joseph and the Tippecanoe, in 
northern Indiana. 

From the time the French surrendered the territory to the 
British in 1765 until near the end of the century there was 
almost no increase in population. The French settlement 
at Vincennes grew a little by the coming of a few immigrants 
from Kentucky. Clark's Grant attracted a few sturdy vet- 
erans of the Revolution, who came in 1786. Occasional 
settlers were beginning to clear the way for their log cabins 
about Vevay and Lawrenceburg and Jeffersonville, in the 
valley of the Ohio, and in the rich river bottoms of what has 
always been called the Pocket, at the mouth of the Wabash 
River. 

Immigration was slow at first because of the fear of the 
Indians rather than the difficulties in clearing the forests 
and opening the roads. But after treaties had been made 
with the savages the new country lost its chief terror and 
the stream of immigration became an irresistible flood. 

18. Difficulties of travel in the wilderness. A traveler in 
the twentieth century finds it hard to picture to himself the 
Indiana wilderness of a hundred years ago. He does not 
even understand why the crude maps of that day gave so 
much importance to the rivers, and why the books of travel 
and later the gazetteers and geographies named and de- 
scribed so carefully every little stream in the State. We 
who travel by railway and over paved highways forget that 
the first settlers had to build their wagon-roads and bridle- 
paths through dense woods, and that, for forty years, travel 
by land anywhere in Indiana was over winding ways among 
stumps and fallen timber cleared out with the axe, and al- 
ways unpaved. And always in the half darkness of the 
woods there was the unspeakable terror of the savage in hid- 



INDIANS AND PIONEERS 17 

ing behind some tree, ready to kill. There were no wide 
prairie landscapes as in Illinois and farther west. On ac- 
count of the labor and the dangers of road-building the 
first settlements were along the rivers, which furnished a 
natural highway for travel that, clown stream at least, was 
always easy to follow and comparatively safe. On the Ohio 
and the Wabash when there was reason to fear the rifle of 
some Indian skulking along the bank, wide planks were 
set up along the edge of the boat to protect those on board. 
For immigrants coming from the East, the Ohio River was 
the route most often chosen by those bound for the Indi- 
ana country. At the first it was easy enough to drift down 
the swift current of the stream and find unoccupied lands 
along the northern bank. But to reach the interior of In- 
diana by water was not so easy. The steamboat was not yet 
invented. The smaller streams were obstructed by fallen 
trees and the resisting current of the larger streams made 
it hard for the navigator to propel his heavily loaded boat 
by long poles pushed against the bottom. He had to pick 
his way through the shallows and along the eddies nearer 
shore and he found there the overhanging branches and the 
waterlogged timbers always in the way. 

The settlements along the Ohio River began at Clark's 
Grant in 1786. Land farther north was richer and more 
desirable, but hard to reach because of the difficulty of 
traveling up the streams and the greater barrier which 
the dense forests presented. It was twenty years before the 
incoming settlers pressed their way up the valley of the 
Whitewater toward Brookville and Richmond, and thirty 
years before the rich lands about Terre Haute were taken 
by the pioneer. Northern Indiana was settled later. 

19. The Swiss at Vevay. One of the earliest Ohio River 
settlements was at Vevay, where, attracted by the beauty 
of the neighboring hills, John James Dufour and a little 
group of families who had come with him from the district 
of Vevay, in Switzerland, secured a grant from the United 
States in 1801, planted their vineyards and named the 



1 8 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

settlement after the old home beyond the sea. In the com- 
munity thus started the customs of the Old World were pre- 
served and a social life as distinct from the rest of pioneer 
America as that of French Vincennes was kept up for many 
years. 

20. The Germans at Harmonie. Soon after, another 
colony of foreigners located on the western border of In- 
diana, not far from the mouth of the Wabash, in a region 
noted for the richness of its soil and the beauty of its sur- 
roundings. Here Frederick Rapp came in 1814 to choose a 
home for a religious society of German peasants called 
Rappites, who under the leadership of George Rapp came 
in flatboats the next year by way of the Ohio and the 
Wabash Rivers. There were eight hundred of them, grown 
folk and little children. The Rappites wore the queer, old- 
fashioned garb of the peasantry of Wiirttemberg and 
brought with them farming tools and machinery and com- 
fortable furnishings that promised for southern Indiana a 
civilization such as it had not yet seen. They took up 
thirty thousand acres and held it in common, building 
strange Old-World houses and planting vineyards and 
orchards and gardens, as the Swiss settlers at Vevay had 
done. To their new home they gave the name of " Har- 
monie." They built good schools and a big church for all 
to worship in, and their venture prospered. There was 
music on the hillside while the people cultivated their grapes 
and flower gardens abounded. 

21. Robert Owen and New Harmony. For some reason 
the Rappite community gave up its rich acres in 1824 and 
went back to Pennsylvania, and Harmonie was sold to 
Robert Owen, a Scotch philanthropist and student of 
social problems who thought to build a New Harmony 
where property should continue to be held in common and 
every man's service should be for the general good. Owen's 
colony brought families from abroad to the new settlement. 
Schools for all were carried on at the cost of the public, at 
a time when free schools elsewhere were unknown. Great 



INDIANS AND PIONEERS 19 

teachers were there to give the children the best training the 
world offered. A free library was opened in the wilderness, 
with twenty thousand books, and a literary club and a 
community theater were started. The community idea was 
soon abandoned, but the schools and libraries and clubs 
and theater, so rare in that early day, continued at New 
Harmony to exert an always growing influence upon the 
life of the new State, Indiana. Great men had founded the 
strange colony and great men still lived there, one of whom, 
Robert Dale Owen, was to be a leader in thought and in the 
political life of Indiana for fifty years to come. 

22. Hardships of the first settlers. The Pilgrim Father 
who crossed the wintry sea in 1620 to build at Plymouth 
Rock a state where men might have civil and religious 
liberty was no braver than his pioneer descendant who, 
two centuries later, came out of the comfortable East to 
make his home in the wilderness of Indiana. Across the 
Allegheny Mountains his journey into the West lay along 
streams and through woods where treacherous Indians were 
waiting for him all the way. But the savage was the least 
of the dangers he had to face. When he entered the forest, 
bears and cougars were ready to dispute his path. About 
his new home wolves and foxes watched for his stock. The 
region was full of wild creatures waiting to devour his 
chickens and his crops. More to be feared than any living 
creature was the peril of disease that threatened his life and 
that of his children until the lands could be drained and 
intelligent physicians be found for every neighborhood. 
Malaria was universal. Epidemics came and there were not 
enough well people to feed and nurse the sick. Fever and 
ague remained wherever there were streams and made 
steady work impossible and life a torment. Where com- 
petent medical attendance was not to be had, the more 
ignorant of the pioneers sought relief for their ailments in 
spells and charms. 

23. Slavery in Kentucky helps the settlement of In- 
diana. The Kentucky settlements from which many of the 



20 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

first Indiana immigrants came were twenty or thirty years 
older, enough older so that a richer class of people had come 
from Virginia and theCarolinas into Kentucky, bringing their 
negro slaves with them. The poorer of these Kentucky pio- 
neers soon found it unbearable that their free labor should 
have to compete with the labor of slaves and they began to 
dream of building new homes across the river where slavery 
was forbidden and where no one looked down on common 
labor. Escape from the blighting effect of slavery drove 
many a Kentucky pioneer into the free territory in Indiana, 
and the attraction of cheaper land and a more adventurous 
life drew thither many who had become restless as civiliza- 
tion began to develop about them. 

24. Abraham Lincoln's family moves to Indiana. One 
of the many Kentuckians who came to clear the forests of 
Indiana was a good-natured, happy-go-lucky farmer from 
the hills below Louisville. His name was Thomas Lincoln, 
and though he could barely read and write he could do 
many things well. He was learned in woodcraft and he 
could build a cabin or make a cupboard or a bedstead as 
skillfully as any trained artisan. An Indian's rifle had killed 
Thomas Lincoln's father and left the boy homeless in the 
new country to grow up without book learning and to pick 
up what knowledge he could while laboring for others and 
competing in much of his labor with his neighbors' slaves. 
And so, in time, when he became a man and was able to sell 
his land, he left the neighborhood where the hardship of 
his life had become too great to bear and, packing his few 
possessions upon a scow, floated down the stream to the 
Ohio. Thence he rowed across to the mouth of Anderson's 
Creek, in Spencer County, Indiana, and cut his way into 
the woods to the eighty-acre piece where the new home was 
to be. With him into the wilderness went his wife Nancy, 
and two children, Sarah, aged nine, and Abraham, aged 
seven, all eager to begin life again in a new world of strange 
surroundings where wild game was plentiful and the streams 
were full of fish, where the land need not be paid for until 



INDIANS AND PIONEERS 21 

after a long time and life meanwhile promised more happi- 
ness than hardship. 

They came into the woods in the cold weather and there 
was no time to build a real house before the winter should be 
upon them. So they set to work to throw together a half- 
faced camp to shelter them until the coming spring would 
give them a chance to cut down the big trees needed for a 
log house and to clear the ground for a garden. Every 
pioneer was familiar with the architecture of the half-faced 
camp. Three of its four sides were of poles and saplings 
which were covered as well as possible with brush and dead 
leaves. The fourth side was open always to the weather, but 
before it burned, through the night, the campfire which kept 
wild beasts away and warmed the little family that lay on 
the hard earth w T ith their feet toward the blazing logs. Al- 
though the winter grew cold and the snow drifted deep 
about the camp and the wolves howled in the forest, these 
pioneer children knew they were safe, and in the novelty and 
interest of their daily work they were content with their 
life together, though there were no neighbors within many 
miles. The Lincoln family lived as the rest of the Indiana 
pioneers lived. But the little woodsman seven years old 
dreamed his dreams and puzzled his mind over many things 
and grew strong, and thoughtful, and wise. And because of 
this life and the way he took it, he became the one Ameri- 
can whom the whole world wonders at and loves. 

The boy Abraham Lincoln became a citizen of Indiana 
in 1 81 6, the year Indiana became a State. LTntil he was 
twenty-one years old he lived in his father's log cabin, work- 
ing out of doors at clearing the forest and cultivating the 
land. Occasionally, for a few weeks at a time, he attended 
a country school to learn what he could of "reading and 
writing and ciphering to the rule of three." 

25. The simple and independent life of the pioneers. 
Homes were very far apart in Indiana in 181 6. There was 
no furniture in the pioneer's first house except what he 
made with his own hands. The floors were of hard-packed 



22 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

earth, and the windows were closed with greased paper 
instead of glass. Except at the schools, where for many 
miles around the children came to be taught for three 
months in the year, there were no general social gatherings. 
When a new house was building, neighbors came to roll the 
logs into place and put the structure together. When a 
pioneer died, there was a funeral to which the people came 
if a wandering preacher could be found to hold the service. 
Sometimes camp-meetings and religious revivals brought 
the families together. And whenever the rumor of Indian 
troubles ran through a settlement the sense of a common 
danger drew the pioneers nearer. But the daily round of 
their lives was lonely. They learned to depend on them- 
selves, and the children as they grew up were taught how to 
do everything that had to be done, not only in the cultiva- 
tion of the soil, but in the making of whatever was needed 
to use or to wear in the simple life that was theirs. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 

1. Why were the Indians and the white people on friendly terms during 
the early period of settlement in the Northwest Territory? 

2. What changed the character of the Indians and their attitude to- 
wards the white people? 

3. How was the city of Fort W 7 ayne founded? 

4. What were the terms of the Treaty of Greenville? 

5. What part did the Swiss, the Germans, and the Scotch have in set- 
tling Indiana? 

6. Locate all the places mentioned in this chapter. 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Imagine yourself a Revolutionary veteran. Write a letter to a friend 
explaining your reasons for emigrating from Virginia to the North- 
west Territory, and the way you expect to go. 

2. Write an account of a typical day's experiences on a farm in the 
Northwest Territory in the days of Abraham Lincoln's childhood. 

3. If you had lived in Massachusetts or Virginia in 1800 would you have 
emigrated to the Northwest Territory? Give reasons for your an- 
swer. 



CHAPTER III 

BIRTH OF THE STATE 

26. The beginnings of popular government in the North- 
west Territory. Popular government in this region dates 
from the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787 by the Conti- 
nental Congress. Before that year there had been military 
administration by soldiers from France and from England, 
and periods without government, but the people had had 
no voice in the administration. The "Ordinance of 1787 
for the Government of the Territory of the United States 
North West of the River Ohio/' was designed to keep order 
in a vast region which extended from Pennsylvania to the 
Mississippi River and from the Canadian border to the 
Ohio, in which there were a few white settlers, so far sepa- 
rated as to make self-government impossible. The great 
value which this new empire derived from its charter was in 
the provision: " There shall be neither slavery nor involun- 
tary servitude in said territory." This condition was in- 
serted upon the demand of General Rufus Putnam and 
Manasseh Cutler and their associates, founders of the Ohio 
colony, who carried with them into the West their New 
England hatred for human slavery. The Ordinance con- 
tained this other provision, which made the new country 
attractive to the home-builder: " Religion, morality, and 
knowledge being necessary to good government and the 
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education 
shall forever be encouraged." 

27. The first local governments in the Territory. Marietta, 
Ohio, was the first capital and General Arthur St. Clair was 
the first governor. In that part of the territory which is now 
Indiana the only local governments which were set up under 
Governor St. Clair's authority were at Clarksville, near 



24 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

Jeffersonville, where a justice of the peace and a captain of 
militia were installed in office, and at Vincennes, where the 
county of Knox was organized, with boundaries extending 
from the Ohio line westward to the Illinois River, and from 
the Ohio River north to Canada. Of course, in a county of 
such size it was not easy to keep the peace and establish 
among the scattered people any particular respect for gov- 
ernment. 

As there were perhaps a hundred thousand Indians in the 
Northwest Territory and less than five thousand whites, the 
chief concern of Governor St. Clair was to keep the Indians 
quiet and, with the aid of such troops as he could get, pro- 
tect the scattered white settlements. He had little time to 
give to the problems of civil government, serious as they 
were. It is doubtful if he visited Indiana during his adminis- 
tration except upon his Indian campaigns. A famine in 
Vincennes in 1790 enlisted his interest and brought a boat- 
load of grain from the Government for the relief of the in- 
habitants. 

28. The first court of justice in the Northwest Territory. 
The sessions of the general court at Vincennes were almost 
as rare as the governor's visits. There were three judges for 
the Northwest Territory, and their first court was opened 
with great dignity at Marietta in 1788. A procession was 
formed, led by the high sheriff with drawn sword. After 
him in order came the citizens, the army officers, attor- 
neys, supreme judges, governor, and clergyman, and the 
newly appointed judges of the common pleas. They marched 
up a path which had been cut and cleared through the forest 
for the occasion. The clergyman prayed, and the sheriff 
solemnly proclaimed : ' ' Oyez : a court is now opened for th( 
administration of even-handed justice to the poor and to the 
rich, to the guilty and the innocent, without respect of per- 
sons, none to be punished without a trial by their peers." 
A multitude of Indians who had come to make a treaty 
stood by while the court was being installed. 

The judges sat once a year at Marietta and at Cincin- 



BIRTH OF THE STATE 25 

nati, and if weather and Indians — equally unfriendly — 
permitted, once at Detroit, or at some point farther west. 
The judge, with an annual salary of eight hundred dollars, 
had to find his way by water and through the woods when 
he went on circuit. There were no roads and no taverns. 
One judge, while riding the circuit in 1789, was drowned 
vhile trying to cross a stream. 

29. Slavery in the Northwest Territory. In the older 
settlements like Vincennes there were negro slaves who had 
been there before the Ordinance of 1787 made slavery un- 
lawful. The owners of these slaves and the settlers who had 
come in from the South were already insisting that laws be 
passed to legalize slaveholding, and the feeling on the sub- 
ject made a sharp division among the inhabitants of the new 
country. Governor St. Clair took the position that only the 
slaves already in the Territory could be held in slavery. 
The leader of the pro-slavery sentiment was William Henry 
Harrison, and the anti-slavery people supported and fol- 
lowed Jonathan Jennings. Political lines were drawn on this 
question only, and no attention was paid to the old party 
divisions between Federalists and Republicans. 

30. Indiana Territory is organized. In 1798 the growth 
of the white population and the consequent increase in 
the difficulty of governing a widely scattered people led to 
the division of the Territory. This was brought about by the 
election of William Henry Harrison as delegate to Congress. 
Harrison was thoroughly familiar with the frontier, and on 
account of his wide acquaintance in the East and his great 
ability, soon secured the passage of an act creating the new 
Territory and naming it Indiana. Its eastern boundary was 
the west line fixed by the Treaty of Greenville. It excluded 
a narrow strip of what is now southeastern Indiana, but 
which was added to Indiana in 1802, and included all west- 
ward to the Mississippi River and northward to Canada. 
The region east of Indiana Territory continued until 1802 
as the Northwest Territory, with General St. Clair still its 
governor. 



26 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

Indiana Territory was organized with a population of 
about five thousand, of whom 929, of English descent, lived 
at Clark's Grant, and 2497, mostly French, were at Vin- 
cennes. The rest were along the Mississippi River and near 
Lake Michigan as far north as Mackinac. 

In July, 1800, the government of Indiana Territory was 
set up at its new capital, Vincennes, and six months later 
came Governor William Henry Harrison to establish order 
and govern with a strong hand until a territorial legislature 
could be brought together to provide much-needed laws 
and a system of government. In 1804, while Harrison was 
governor at Vincennes, the Louisiana Purchase was made 
by President Jefferson, and the new territory west of the 
Mississippi River was organized as the District of Louisiana, 
and the territorial officers of Indiana were appointed to 
govern Louisiana. This government of Louisiana from Vin- 
cennes as its capital lasted a little more than a year. 

In 1805 a section of territory on the north was cut off to 
form the present State of Michigan, and in 1809 a separate 
territorial government was given to Illinois. 

One important event occurred during the territorial 
period of Indiana history. This was the founding, in 1806, 
of Vincennes University and the beginning of a system of 
higher education in the wilderness country. 

31. Indiana Territory and the Indians. From 1800 to 
1 81 2 Governor Harrison's duties kept him almost con- 
stantly absent from the capital, and much of the time he 
was in camp and on the march struggling with the Indians 
for control of the Wabash Valley. 

The various treaties which the chiefs made with the 
American representatives were not generally satisfactory 
to the tribesmen, and the Indians continued to be restless 
and troublesome until 181 1 , when war broke out. Harrison, 
still in command of the troops, gave up the civil govern- 
ment and entered actively into the Indian campaign. He 
began by strengthening the forts along the Wabash and 
built Fort Harrison on the bluffs above Terre Haute. 



BIRTH OF THE STATE 



27 



Continuing up the Wabash, Harrison, with his little army 
of Kentucky and Indiana militia and United States regu- 
lars, encountered the enemy, under the command of a leader 
called " The Prophet," at the Indian village of Prophets- 
town, near Lafayette, and before dawn on November 7, 
181 1, won a bloody victory on the battle-ground of Tip- 
pecanoe. This second battle on Indiana soil stirred the 
imagination of the settlers and made popular heroes of all 
who took part. Among the killed were Colonel Abraham 
Owen; Major Joseph H. Daviess, attorney-general of Ken- 
tucky; Captain Spier Spencer, of Corydon; Captain Jacob 
Warrick; Colonel 
Isaac White; and 
Thomas Randolph, 
late attorney-gen- 
eral of Indiana Ter- 
ritory. Owen, Da- 
viess, Spencer, 
Warrick, White, and 
Randolph Coun- 
ties, organized soon 
after, were named 
for them. Other he- 
roes of Tippecanoe 
whose names were 

given to Indiana counties were Joseph Bartholomew, Tous- 
saint Dubois, William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Parke, 
John Tipton, and Davis Floyd. 

The Indian troubles in Indiana would have ended with 
this battle had not war with England broken out the fol- 
lowing year. But the Indians were again encouraged by 
their old allies, the English, and for another year kept up 
their unsuccessful resistance to the American arms and 
terrorized the settlers. The lonely settlements throughout 
the Territory protected themselves as well as they could by 
erecting blockhouses and by scout duty watched for the 
coming of the wandering bands of savages. Blockhouses 




AN OLD VIEW OF FORT HARRISON 

Erected in 1811 near Terre Haute 



28 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

were built throughout the length of the Wabash. At Pigeon 
Roost, in Scott County, twenty-four whites were massacred 
on September 3, 1812. A few days later at Fort Harrison 
a night attack by Indians was successfully resisted by the 
commandant, Captain Zachary Taylor, afterwards Presi- 
dent of the United States, who bravely kept up the fight 
against overwhelming numbers until daybreak, when the 
enemy withdrew. The American soldiers destroyed the 
Indian villages in northeastern Indiana, but were unable to 
draw the Indians, now living on the bounty of the British, 
into a battle. A few forays and an occasional skirmish were 
all that developed. The time was near when the Indian as 
an enemy to civilization in Indiana should be no more. 

32. Daniel Boone in the Indiana Territory. The early 
settlement of Indiana owed much to Daniel Boone, the 
woodsman and trapper and Indian fighter who in his fre- 
quent journeys over the Wilderness Trail had led the cara- 
vans of emigrants out of Virginia and Pennsylvania and 
over the Cumberland Mountains into the heart of Ken- 
tucky. But his explorations and long hunting journeys were 
not confined to Kentucky, for the wild life north of the 
Ohio River soon called him into Indiana, and before 1800 
he was pitching his hunting camp among the hills of Har- 
rison County. The earliest of those who came to live in 
that picturesque county were Dennis Pennington and 
Squire Boone, brother of Daniel Boone. Squire Boone was 
a famous hunter, the tales of whose strange adventures 
with bears and with Indians are still told about the old 
county seat at Corydon. He was buried in a cave which 
he had discovered and where he had once hidden to escape 
the Indians. 

33. Corydon is made the county seat of Harrison County. 
The settlement of Harrison County proceeded rapidly. 
Among the first to enter land in the county was Governor 
Harrison himself, who in 1804 bought from the Government 
the land where Corydon stands and held it for a short time. 
Three years later he took up other land in the same region 



BIRTH OF THE STATE 



29 



and built a water mill and set out a large orchard, some of 
whose trees were still standing a century later. 

The county seat of Harrison County was laid out in 1807, 
and as the governor passed through the new settlement on 
one of his many official journeys he was asked to name the 
place. At the home of Edward Smith, where Harrison was 
being entertained, the 
daughter of the house 
was called upon to sing 
the governor's favorite 
song, and she sang — 

"Sweet Cory don's notes are 
all o'er, 
Now lonely he sleeps in 
the clay, 
His cheeks blown with roses 
no more 
Since death called his 
spirit away." 

The young governor 
chose the name Cory- 
don for the town be- 
cause the pioneer's 
daughter sang the song 
so well. 

In 181 1 a court-house 
was built at Corydon 
by Dennis Pennington. 
Its walls were two and a half feet thick, of blue lime- 
stone. It was built so well that a hundred years later no 
flaw could be foun.d in it. 

34. Corydon becomes the capital of Indiana Territory. 
Until Illinois Territory was organized in 1809, Vincennes, 
the old capital, stood at the center of population, but the 
cutting-off of Illinois left the town on the extreme western 
border of the new Territory of Indiana. Efforts began at 
once to move the capital farther east, and on March II, 
1 81 3, the legislature, after failing to agree upon Madison, 




THE OLD STATE HOUSE AT CORYDON 
Erected in 1811-12 by Dennis Pennington 



3 o THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

Lawrenceburg, Vevay, Charlestown, Clarksville, and Jef- 
fersonville, finally chose Corydon. The capital was moved 
in May. The Pennington Court-House became the State 
House and held that distinction for eleven years. 

35. Indiana becomes a State. Indian troubles were now 
at their worst, and one session of the legislature was omitted 
on this account. The people began to find fault with the 
Government at Washington for not protecting the terri- 
torial citizens, and to demand the admission of Indiana as 
a State which could protect its own people. Jonathan Jen- 
nings, delegate to Congress, presented petitions for admis- 
sion to the Union in 1812, and in 181 5 was able to show 
that there were now living in Indiana more than the ne- 
cessary sixty thousand free white people. The appeal for 
statehood was granted in April, 1816. An election was held 
in all the settled portions of the State, from Centerville 
and Brookville on the northeast to New Harmony and 
Vincennes on the west, and the forty-three delegates so 
chosen gathered on June 10, 1816, at Corydon to make a 
constitution. 

There were about five hundred people in the village of 
Corydon in 1816, and the men who gathered there came 
by boat or on horseback — for there were no roads. The 
hotel accommodations were few, and many of the delegates 
stopped at the Old Capital Tavern, a mile out of town on the 
New Albany road. The little State House, forty feet square, 
was their gathering-place, and the work of constitution- 
making was soon over. The delegates were the leading men 
of the new State, men of character and ability who came 
determined to create a system of government that would 
protect the rights of the people and keep the State clean 
from the stain of human slavery. 

Among the men who gathered at Corydon to make a con- 
stitution were Jonathan Jennings, of Clark County, soon to 
become the first governor of the State, and a noted hater of 
slavery; William Hendricks, a gentleman of the old school, 
who was to be Indiana's first Congressman and later a 



BIRTH OF THE STATE 



3i 



Senator of the United States; General James Noble and 
General Robert Hanna, afterward Senators of the United 
States; James Scott, of Clark County, soon to become a 
judge of the Supreme Court; Davis Floyd, an officer under 
George Rogers Clark; Benjamin Parke, a cavalry officer at 
the battle of Tippecanoe and later judge of the United 
States District Court; John DePauw, of Washington 




THE OLD CONSTITUTION ELM TREE 

Still standing at Corydon. Under this tree, it is said, the first constitution of Indiana was adopted, 

June 29, 1816 



County, father of Washington C. DePauw, the benefactor 
of DePauw University; and Dennis Pennington, the Cory- 
don pioneer who had built the State House. 

When the little State House was too warm during the 
sultry June days, the convention adjourned to meet under 
a big tree near by. The old elm, one of the largest of its kind 
anywhere, has been tenderly cared for by the people of 
Corydon for the shelter it gave to the founders of Indiana, 
and is known as " The Constitution Elm." 

On December 4, 1816, Congress admitted Indiana into 



32 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

the Union. Jonathan Jennings entered upon his duties as 
its first governor at Corydon and the history of the State 
really began. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 

1. Make a list of the most important men mentioned in this chapter. 

2. How did each of these men contribute to the prosperity of the Ter- 
ritory? 

3. What are the most important places mentioned in this chapter? 

4. Locate each of these places and state why it is important. 

5. Explain the process by which the Territory of Indiana was changed 
to the State of Indiana. 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Describe and dramatize the "First Court of Justice in the North- 
west Territory." Describe several cases that might have come before 
this court. 

2. Discuss the following question from the standpoint of the people who 
lived in Indiana Territory in 1806: "Resolved, That a university 
should be established in Indiana Territory." 

3. Write such a petition as Jonathan Jennings might have presented to 
Congress in 18 12 asking that Indiana be made a State. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NEW CAPITAL 

36. The Quaker settlers. Soon after Indiana came into 
the Union in 181 6, and particularly when the Indians moved 
west in 181 8, Indiana suddenly began to grow. The popu- 
lation in 1810 was 24,520; in 1816 it was 63,897; in 1820, 
147,178; and in 1830, 344,508. Immigrants no longer 
stopped in the Ohio River Valley, but began to occupy 
the lands along the upward course of the streams toward 
the center of the State. 

Before 1820 the beautiful Whitewater country as far 
north as Wayne County was settled by families of well- 
to-do pioneers. Among these were many members of the 
Society of Friends, who seem to have had no fear of the 
Indians. As early as 1803 the Friends were providing 
the Indians with farming tools and teaching them how to 
cultivate the land. In the proceedings of the Society at 
Baltimore that year this report appears: — 

The committee procured last spring for the use of the Indians 
six sets of plow irons, sets of harness, 50 axes, 6 mattocks, 6 iron 
wedges, fifty hoes, which were sent to Pittsburg to be conveyed 
to Fort Wayne by way of Cincinnati, and delivered as a present 
from the Society of Friends to Little Turtle and other chiefs to be 
disposed of to such of their people as they knew were desirous of 
using them . . . for since there has been no liquor in the Indian 
country they are very industrious and appear to be fond of rais- 
ing stock. 

37. Farming on the Whitewater. The letters of the In- 
diana pioneers are full of descriptions of their life in the 
woods. One of the early settlers near Brookville wrote from 
his new home to the friends back in Virginia in January, 
1824: — 



34 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

We have bought a small farm of 125 acres and a crop of corn 
and hogs. Four hundred dollars was the price with twenty acres 
cleared, two cabins which are comfortable in time of storm, a 
tolerable barn and six good springs of water. As to fruit trees, 
there are 130 apple, 150 peach, cherry and English plum trees 
plenty — all good age to begin bearing. We have two milk cows 
and ten hogs. Since new year's we have salted fourteen hundred 
pounds of pork and beef. This soil is good for wheat, rye, corn, 
oats, sweet and Irish potatoes, cabbage, tobacco, flax, hemp and 
any quantity of water and musk melons, turnips plenty — still 
growing in the field. . . . 

It appears to be healthy in this part of the country. But few 
have had the fever or ague. 

There are people here from the Jerseys very numerous, some 
Yankees, Pennsylvanians, South and North Carolinians and some 
from Virginia and Ireland. The most of these people are pro- 
fessors of religion, they think. There are Methodists, Baptists, 
Presbyterians, United Brethren, New-lights and a large settle- 
ment of Quakers or Friends nicknamed. If Franklin Taylor would 
wish to know the price of teaching — $8.00 per scholar and room 
plenty here. 

Within four miles are eleven grist mills; carding and fulling and 
spinning machines plenty. We are settled within two miles of 
Fairfield, one mile from the east fork of White Water, where 
sugar trees are plenty. The man we bought of last season made 
four hundred pounds of sugar. 

Plenty of neighbors who seem very kind. 

38. Influence of Brookville. Brookville was an important 
center in the social and political life of that time, for all the 
land that was bought of the Government in the northeast- 
ern part of the State had to be bought at the Brookville 
Land-Office. The men of that little town had much to do 
with governing early Indiana, and many were born there, 
in the time of its greatness between 18 10 and 1830, who 
have made the State of Indiana proud of them. Governors, 
senators, generals, foreign ministers, judges, writers, artists, 
and men of science have been among them. 

39. Settlement of central and northern Indiana. Set- 
tlements also followed the long-familiar water highway of 



THE NEW CAPITAL 35 

the Wabash as far as Logansport, and up White River to 
Hamilton County. 

One of the first settlements in central Indiana was made 
by members of the Finch family, from Connersville, in the 
spring of 1819. The party traveled from Connersville to 
Noblesville by way of Newcastle and Anderson, and one of 
them, who was nine years old at the time of the journey 
has told his story of the migration. It was snowing hard, 
although it was the first of April. 

They made their way very slowly with their ox- team, driving 
some stock and cutting the road as they went. I got to crying and 
they came to see what was the matter. I told them I was so cold 
that my back was cracked. ... All the playmates I had from 
April until July were little Indians. My favorite was one with a 
red head. I used to go hunting with him with bow and arrows for 
ground squirrels and birds. 

In .1819 about thirty families were living in the woods 
near Fort Wayne where the followers of La Salle had found 
their portage from the Maumee to the Wabash, and where 
in 1794 General Anthony Wayne had made life safe for the 
white settler. In 18 19 Fort Wayne ceased to be a military 
post, and in 1822 the establishing of a government land- 
office turned the attention of all newcomers from the east 
and northeast toward what was soon to become a settle- 
ment of commercial importance, just as it had been the 
chief trading post in Indiana over a hundred years before. 

Travel by land about Fort Wayne at that time is de- 
scribed in a letter written in 1805 by Ziba Foote, who had 
gone there to do surveying for the Government. He was 
coming back to escape the malaria, which was killing the 
newcomers, and was drowned while in the execution of his 
duty. 

I determined to go back to Cincinnati with all speed, for if I 
stayed there I thought I should die. The next day there came 
along four men with but two horses. I packed up to start with 
them when the fever came on and I was obliged to stay. The next 



36 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

morning, feeling fresh and resolute, I got my horse and overtook 
them before night. That night we all slept in the woods. Next 
noon we arrived at Fort Defiance. Here I was taken with the 
fever again and they left me. I went on after them next morning, 
about three miles, lost my road and went back, hired a man for 
three dollars to pilot me eighteen miles. He turned back; I kept 
on, expecting to overtake the company and knowing if I failed 
I must sleep in the woods alone. It rained very hard constantly. 
I spurred on till dark. I could go no farther, but must spend the 
night alone in those dark woods. In the first place I knew I should 
need water in the night, but had only my boots to hold it, so I 
climbed down the river bank and filled one boot with water and 
placed it so I could drink out of it in the night. I tried for a long 
time to strike a fire, but it was raining very hard. I begged, 
prayed, and cried, but had to give it up. So I took my two blankets 
and lay down in the woods, almost doubting if I should ever rise 
again. The rain poured down until twelve o'clock. At daylight 
I hurried on, and at evening we reached a house. 

The valley of the St. Joseph River, between Elkhart and 
South Bend, first visited by the French missionary to the 
Indians, Father Marquette, in 1673, was opened for settle- 
ment between 1820 and 1825. 

40. The first roads. These were the beginnings of home- 
building in the heart of Indiana and along its northern 
borders. Before any rapid growth could be possible in the 
interior, roads must be built, for there was no approach by 
water as there was in the region crossed by the Ohio and the 
Wabash Rivers and their tributaries. Most of these later 
comers were from New England and other Northern States. 

Road-building had not yet begun. The pioneer seeking a 
new home where there were no navigable streams followed 
the old Indian trails or cut through the trees what was 
called a " trace," a winding way wide enough for a bridle 
path or perhaps even for the passage of a cart, but in no 
sense a road. 

41. WhetzelPs Trace. The Indians in the upper valley 
of White River belonged to the Delaware tribe and were 
friendly to the settlers, who had begun to push their way 



THE NEW CAPITAL 37 

to the very edge of the Indian reservation. With the con- 
sent of their chief, Anderson, Jacob Whetzell cut a trace 
westward from Brookville. This trace ran to the bluff of 
White River near Waverly, and where Greenwood now 
stands crossed another trace that led northward to the 
White River Ford near the mouth of Fall Creek. These 
traces were followed mostly by Indians and by whites who 
visited the Indians to trade with them. Along the traces, 
in what was still considered Indian land, a few of the more 
adventurous had built their homes before the land was 
offered for sale by the Government, and in 1 8 19 or 1820 two 
cabins were put up near the mouth of Fall Creek by John 
Pogue and John McCormick, who came to Indianapolis be- 
fore the place was opened for settlement and when it was 
still without a name. 

42. Locating the new capital. In 1820 the legislature, 
sitting at Corydon, named a commission of ten to locate the 
four square miles of land which Congress had donated to 
the State of Indiana for its capital. Nine of these men en- 
tered upon their duties. They were George Hunt, of Wayne ; 
John Connor, of Fayette; Stephen Ludlow, of Dearborn; 
John Gilliland, of Switzerland; Joseph Bartholomew, of 
Clark; John Tipton, of Harrison; Jesse B. Durham, of 
Jackson; Frederick Rapp, of Posey; and Thomas Emison, of 
Knox. They met with Governor Jennings on May 22, 1820, 
on the banks of White River just below Noblesville. For 
sixteen days they studied the advantages of various points 
between Noblesville and Waverly, and on June 7, 1820, 
fixed upon the ford of White River at the mouth of Fall 
Creek as the location for the permanent capital. Their 
choice was influenced by the hope that White River might 
become the great highway of travel for steamboats, just 
beginning to appear upon the Ohio and the lower Wabash, 
and was determined, no doubt, by the fact that they had 
found here the geographical center of Indiana. It is in- 
teresting to recall that the White River Ford at the mouth 
of Fall Creek is the place where Lieutenant Zachary Taylor, 



38 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

afterwards President of the United States, is said to have 
crossed with his troops in 1812 on their way to garrison 
Fort Harrison at Terre Haute. 

The site of the new capital was densely wooded, with oak, 
elm, ash, poplar, maple, walnut, beech, hickory, buckeye, 
and other varieties of forest trees. 

43. Indianapolis is named and begins to grow. In 1821 
the legislature approved the location chosen for the new 
capital, named it Indianapolis, — city of Indiana, — and 
appointed three commissioners to lay off a town within the 
four miles square. The lots were platted and the first sale 
occurred in October of the same year. Settlers had been 
coming in rapidly and the first day's sale disposed of over 
three hundred lots, for the most part bought for homes. The 
population came about half and half from Brookville, by 
Whetzell's Trace, and from Kentucky and beyond, through 
the woods and by White River. For some time political 
divisions in the little community were altogether between 
the Whitewater crowd and the Kentucky crowd. 

44. How the capital was moved. The legislature was 
meeting at Corydon every winter and bringing together 
each new year representatives from the newly settled north 
country, to whom it was a great hardship to travel on horse- 
back for two or three weeks in winter time to a capital on 
the southern border of the State. The site of the capital 
having been fixed and its streets and public squares laid out 
and many of its lots bought and built upon, the sentiment in 
favor of the removal from Corydon to Indianapolis became 
too strong to resist. 

In 1824 a law was passed at Corydon, which enacted that 
Indianapolis be " adopted and established as the perma- 
nent seat of government of this State upon the second Mon- 
day in January, 1825," and Samuel Merrill, then the treas- 
urer of the State, was appointed " to superintend generally 
the removal of the records, documents, and public property 
of every description ... to Indianapolis previous to the 
second Monday in January, 1825," and he was directed "to 



THE NEW CAPITAL 



39 



keep a fair and exact account of the expenses necessarily 
incurred in the said transportation and removal." By a joint 
resolution he was later directed " to sell to the highest 
bidder all the chairs, tables, and other furniture, which in 
his opinion cannot be advantageously removed to Indiana- 
polis." 

Colonel Samuel Merrill, the son of the treasurer, says: — 
Four four-horse wagons and one or two saddle horses formed 
the means of conveyance for the two families, consisting of about 
twelve persons, and for a printing press and the state treasury in 
silver in strong wooden boxes. The gentlemen slept in the wagons 
or on the ground to protect the silver. The families found shelter 
at night in log cabins which stood along the road at rare, though 
not inconvenient, intervals. The country people were many of 
them as primitive as their dwellings, which usually consisted of 
but one room, serving for all the purposes of domestic life — 
cooking, eating, sleeping, spinning, weaving, and the entertain- 
ment of company. 

Mr. Merrill, himself, described the trip: — 

Though the distance was only 125 miles, such was the state of 
the roads that it required about ten days to perform the journey 
in a wagon. Specimens of bad roads that it is thought cannot 
well be beat may still be found at some seasons of the year, but 
the veterans of those days, unless their memories deceive them, 
have seen and experienced more of the depth and width of mud- 
holes than can well be conceived in this degenerate age. 

" The fair and exact account of the expenses necessarily 
incurred in the transportation and removal," presented by 
Mr. Merrill to the legislature for payment, was as follows: — 

To Messrs. Posey & Wilson for boxes $7-56 

To Mr. Lefler for one box .50 

To Seybert & Likens for transportation of 3945 pounds 

at $1 .90 a hundred 74-95 

To Jacob & Samuel Kenoyer for transportation of one 

load 35-06 

Total $1 18.07 

Deduct for proceeds of sale of furniture at Corydon, 

November 22, 1824 52.52 

Net cost of removal $65.55 



4 o THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

Seventy years after, one of Mr. Merrill's family, who was 
at the time of the trip a girl seventeen years old, described 
this journey to her children. .She said: — 

The road was laid with rails or logs for miles, then covered with 
water that seemed bottomless. When the horses and wagon 
would go down, it seemed they might have reached China. At 
such times, my sister would scream with fright. One day we 
traveled two miles and a half only. The water lay in the road too 
deep to venture in and trees had to be felled to make a road 
around. Once Mr. Douglass's wagon stuck fast, and had to be 
pried out. The next morning, after traveling that short distance, 
Mr. Merrill said, when we were ready to start, looking back to 
where we had started the day before : ' ' Suppose we go back and 
take a fresh start?" However, we journeyed forward. 

I walked all the way, only when we came near Columbus, as it 
was raining, which it did after the first day almost every day. 
When near Columbus Mr. Merrill insisted on my riding in the 
wagon; the first thing I knew he lifted me into the wagon. I sat 
there until we reached the hotel, which looked fine with a hand- 
some sign. 

Mr. Seybert, the teamster, had a fashion of putting bells on 
his horses whenever we came near a town. We begged him to 
leave them off when he drove into Indianapolis, but he would n't 
consent. So we went into the seat of government with fine, 
large, strong horses strung with bells, all ringing. The sound 
brought the good people out to stare at us. I was glad to be in 
a covered wagon at that time. 

And so the capital found its way through the wilderness, 
a hundred miles and more, to the little group of log cabins 
scattered along Washington Street, where there were stumps 
and ponderous logs and vast swampy places all along that 
famous thoroughfare, and where the hardships of life which 
every family had to suffer drew all the people into a com- 
mon sympathy and understanding. 



THE NEW CAPITAL 41 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 

1. What different classes of people settled in Indiana between the years 
1816 and 1830? 

2. What important events were happening in the country outside of In- 
diana during these same years (1816-30)? 

3. Dscribe the roads and locate on the map the two important " traces" 
mentioned. 

4. Give the reasons for moving the capital from Corydon to Indiana- 
polis. 

5. What were the important places during this period of the State's 
history? Locate them. 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Write a brief paragraph about each of the men mentioned in the sec- 
tion, Influence of Brookville, stating what each did to make him a 
person of national importance. 

2. Describe Indianapolis as it appeared to the " girl seventeen years old " 
when she entered it riding in Mr. Merrill's wagon. Give some idea of 
her probable feelings. 



CHAPTER V 

INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 

45. The building of roads, canals, and railways. In his 

message to the legislature of 181 7, Governor Jonathan Jen- 
nings recommended that a general plan be adopted for 
clearing and deepening the streams, building roads, and 
constructing canals, so that travel from one part of Indiana 
to another might be made easy. In this way the State would 
grow strong, because the developing of its roads and water- 
ways would bring more people and give the citizens every- 
where a market for what they could grow upon their farms. 
These plans for internal improvements were undertaken all 
over the country until many of the States, particularly in 
the old Northwest Territory, had planned the building of 
roads and canals and railways that could never be paid for 
either by taxes or by the tolls which the improvements 
themselves would produce. The need of these improve- 
ments was greater in Indiana than anywhere, because In- 
diana had denser woods and more swamps and impassable 
streams. 

The fact that it took ten days to travel from Corydon to 
Indianapolis, and also that immigrants traveling westward 
toward the new capital had to cut their own way through 
the wilderness or follow laboriously over the old trails and 
traces, convinced the legislature and, indeed, all the people 
of Indiana, that roads must be built at any cost. In 1836 
this idea had so taken possession of every one that untold 
millions of dollars were appropriated for improvements, and 
the work was actually commenced all over Indiana when 
there was no money to be had except what the State could 
borrow. And so the State borrowed so much with which to 
build canals and roads and railways that it was unable, out 



INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 



43 




of all the earnings of the various enterprises, to pay even 
the interest on the debt. 

A single law passed in 1836 appropriated thirteen million 
dollars, one sixth of all the wealth in the State, and pro- 
vided for a canal in the Whitewater Valley, another from 
Fort Wayne to Evansville by way of Indianapolis, a third 
to connect these 
two, and either a 
canal or a railway 
from Fort Wayne 
to Lake Michigan 
by way of Goshen, 
South Bend, and 
LaPorte. Besides 
these canals, roads 
and railways were 
planned for every- 
body, everywhere. 
The State borrowed 
all it could and spent 

while the money lasted, but the system was too big and 
too costly to succeed. Hard times and failure came. 
Some of the canals were finished, some were not. All were 
abandoned. 

The canals failed partly because of the financial panic 
which made it impossible to get money to complete the 
system, but mainly because the building of railways, which 
began in 1839, furnished a cheaper and quicker means of 
travel. The completion of a line between Madison and 
Indianapolis in 1847 brought the capital into daily contact 
with the river traffic along the Ohio, and for a short time, 
until other railroads were built, added greatly to the com- 
mercial importance of both towns. The line began at the 
southern end and was built very slowly. Each day its 
tracks and trains came nearer to Indianapolis. When the 
trains reached to within ten miles of the city, as the tracks 
were building, the people thronged the country roads to 



THE OLD NATIONAL ROAD BRIDGE OVER 
THE WHITE RIVER AT INDIANAPOLIS 



44 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

see what the locomotive looked like, and when the first 
train pulled into the new station at South and Delaware 
Streets the whole population of Indianapolis turned out to 
see the wonderful sight. The first railway trains were 
flimsy affairs and the traffic they carried would seem insig- 
nificant to the modern railway man. In a letter written 
by the president of the Madison road, in 1846, is given some 
idea of what business the road was doing. "To-day has 
been very profitable to us," he wrote, " as the receipts for 
passengers alone must have been over $450, much more 
than any one day has ever yielded before. The cars were 
crowded, a load of hay caught fire, and an axle broke, and 
the train was detained two hours, so that the labor and 
anxiety were very great." 

As the railways multiplied, the capital city began to 
reap the benefit of its new commercial connections. Direct 
lines were finished to Lafayette and Chicago, to Lawrence- 
burg and Cincinnati, to Richmond and Terre Haute, and 
to Cleveland, and in time the Wabash and Erie Canal and 
the Wabash River were paralleled by the Wabash Rail- 
way. Just as the opening of the east and west highways, 
particularly the National Road, had brought the first im- 
migrants into the wilderness, the railways brought into 
Indiana men in search of employment and others in search 
of investment. More than any other influence the railways 
have stimulated the increase in population, built up the 
commercial prosperity of the State, and made Indianapolis 
and other manufacturing cities centers of trade. 

46. The Wabash and Erie Canal. One canal, the Wabash 
and Erie, was completed in 1843 from Toledo to Lafayette, 
and prospered for a short time. It brought a number of 
towns in the Wabash Valley into closer relations with one 
another, and until railways interfered with its business and 
floods and misfortunes of various kinds made it necessary 
to spend all of its earnings in repairs, it was wonderfully 
popular. Long caravans — hundreds of wagons — loaded 
with farm products waited at every stopping-point along 



INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 45 

the way for the canal boat to come and carry their cargo to- 
ward the eastern markets. Travelers chose the canal boat 
as the most comfortable mode of rapid transit — for often 
it made a speed of eight miles an hour — and enjoyed the 
social life on board much as people of the twentieth century 
enjoy the social life of a transatlantic liner. When the canal 
boat came to town horns were blown by the mariners to 
summon the populace, and the world turned out to see the 
boat go by. During this period Fort Wayne received from 
the business which the canal brought to it a commercial 
importance which it never afterwards lost. 

47. No money for free public schools. While the leg- 
islatures were lavishing public money and exhausting public 
credit upon internal improvements, they were overlooking 
something else of greater importance. The constitution the 
people had made at Corydon in 181 6 required the State, 
" as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by law 
for a general system of education, from township schools to 
a state university," which should be free for all. But the 
canals and roads used up so many millions of dollars that 
there were no free schools for thirty-five years. Indiana was 
the first State to advance the idea of a free school for every 
child in the State. But the idea called for money and the 
State had none. So, for many years, although everywhere 
there were schools for short terms, none of them were 
free. 

48. The first schools and teachers. Many of the men who 
came to Indiana while it was still a Territory had lived in 
the woods and had had no opportunity for book learning. 
But they believed in education for their children. Wherever 
a settlement was started, some one was found to teach the 
boys and girls and a log schoolhouse was built for them. 
Sometimes these teachers were men of little scholarship. 
Quite as often the busiest man or woman in the community 
would volunteer to do the teaching. One of the famous 
teachers at the beginning was Mrs. Julia Dumont, of 
Vevay, a woman of real scholarship, with a gift for making 



46 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

children learn. She was the wife of a pioneer statesman and 
taught because she loved to teach. One of the first teachers 
in Indianapolis was the treasurer of the State, who, al- 
though busy with state affairs, was willing to teach because 
he was a scholar and knew how to teach. Many of the chil- 
dren of early Indianapolis were taught by Henry Ward 
Beecher, afterwards one of the world's greatest preachers. 
The man who taught the boy Abraham Lincoln in the log 
schoolhouse in Spencer County was one of the busiest men 
in his part of the State and one of the most active of its 
public officials. 

The first schoolhouses were built of logs and had not even 
greased paper over the openings left in the logs for the light 
to enter. They had no floor and no chimney. In some of 
them, the fire was built on a raised earthen platform in the 
middle of the single room, and the smoke and sparks went 
out through a hole in the roof. The children sat with their 
backs to the walls and faced the fire, studying by the light 
that came through the ceiling. 

In the country, homes were far apart, and children some- 
times tramped as much as four miles through the woods and 
the mire to school. One little boy we read about had to make 
this journey every day by a path that was sometimes hard 
to find and that was often visited by wild beasts, so that 
every day his mother would go with him and go after him, 
carrying her baby in her arms. 

49. The methods of instruction. Children of all ages were 
taught in the same room. A loud school was one in which 
a single child recited while all the other pupils studied aloud. 
The noise of such a school in action sounded to the way- 
farer like a nest of raging bumblebees. 

There were few books, almost the only volume in uni- 
versal use being the speller. A boy's scholarship was often 
determined by whether he could " spell down" the rest in 
the daily spelling-match. To do this he would commit to 
memory column after column of words with no idea of 
their meaning. In some districts he was the best reader 



INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 47 

who could read the lesson in a loud voice with the greatest 
speed, and the champion could race through a paragraph so 
rapidly that only those who had already studied the passage 
could guess what it was all about. 

50. The missionary preachers were also teachers. Pri- 
vate schools and neighborhood pay-schools and seminaries 
for teaching the higher branches depended upon the fees 
which the parents paid, but many of them received money 
from the churches, and many of the teachers were sent into 
the new country by the religious societies in the East, who 
believed that religion and education belonged together. 
The preachers were better educated than the people to 
whom they ministered, and they came with the spirit and 
the pluck of missionaries to give the benefit of their piety 
and their scholarship to a people that sorely needed both. 
And so the first preachers were teachers, too. This had 
been true from the days of the Jesuit missionaries. The 
French priests at Vincennes, a century earlier, brought 
scholarship as well as religion to the people of the settle- 
ments and taught in their parish schools the children of 
the whole community, whether they belonged to the church 
or not. 

51. The progress of education was slow. As late as 1850 
thousands of the children of Indiana attended no schools at 
all. The average school year for all the children in the State 
was only eight weeks long. The census for 1850 showed 
that one grown person in every five in Indiana could neither 
read nor write. In some counties where there were colleges, 
but no common schools, the number of illiterates was twice 
as great in 1850 as it had been ten years before, and half 
the people could not read. 

It was many years before the people would consent to the 
payment of a tax to keep up free schools. The pioneers were 
busy with clearing their farms of timber and making them 
fit for cultivation, and in earning and saving enough money 
to pay the cost of the land, and they were too poor while 
they owed these first debts to want to pay taxes even for 



48 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

schools. The Government had set apart certain lands for 
sale for school purposes, but these sales produced little 
money and so free schools had to wait until more prosper- 
ous times should come. 

52. Indiana University. A state seminary was opened at 
Bloomington on May I, 1824, and Latin and Greek were 
taught to ten ambitious students. The state seminary was 






WMHm&!&ik- 




'*&*?* '$& 



fe V 




Courtesy Hiimnn-Cottman Centennial History of Indiana 

THE FIRST BUILDINGS ON INDIANA UNIVERSITY CAMPUS 

later called Indiana College and finally Indiana University. 
Its first faculty consisted of the Reverend Baynard Rush 
Hall, who is remembered more because of a book called 
The New Purchase, in which he gave his impressions of the 
backwoods life in Indiana, than for the learning which he 
imparted to the ten young men who constituted the entire 
student body. 

Of these first ten students one became a tanner, one a 
merchant, three physicians, two ministers, and three law- 
yers. One of the ten was Joseph A. Wright, who in later 
years became governor of Indiana and American minister 
to Prussia. 

53. Religious societies found colleges. The same church 



INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 49 

enterprise which sent preachers into Indiana as missionary 
teachers provided colleges to the people of the State long 
before free common schools were opened. Hanover Col- 
'lege was established in 1827, and Wabash in 1833, both 
by the Presbyterians; Franklin in 1835, by the Baptists; 
Asbury (now De Pauw University) in 1837, by the Meth- 
odists; the University of Notre Dame in 1842, by the 
Catholics; Earlham in 1847, by the Friends; and North 
Western Christian University (now Butler) in 1855, by the 
Church of the Disciples. 

These colleges and Indiana University furnished the 
scholarship required for the teachers and ministers of the 
period before the Civil War, and, with the influences that 
grew out of the schools in the New Harmony colony, were 
the source of the agitation which began in 1846 in favor of 
a universal system of free common schools. 

54. Caleb Mills and the free schools. One of the teach- 
ing preachers was Caleb Mills, of Massachusetts, who 
came first as a missionary organizer of Sunday schools, 
about 1830, and three years later helped to establish Wabash 
College, at Crawfordsville. In 1846 Caleb Mills began to 
publish each year a message to the state legislature and to 
the people, in which he called attention to the number of 
people in Indiana who could not read, and pleaded for free 
schools for all the children and the levy of enough taxes to 
wipe out the disgrace of Indiana's illiteracy. In this fight 
for free schools he met with strong opposition, but he had 
the help of the educated people of the State, of the men. 
connected with the colleges, and particularly of Robert 
Dale Owen, of New Harmony; Daniel Read, of Indiana 
University; Calvin Fletcher, of Indianapolis; and John I. 
Morrison, a famous teacher of Salem. 

55. The present system of schools is established. While 
this agitation for free schools was going on, the people held 
a convention at Indianapolis in 1850 to frame a new con- 
stitution for the State. The convention brought together a 
number of the strong men of the State, including Professor 



50 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

Daniel Read, of Indiana University; John I. Morrison; 
Robert Dale Owen ; Schuyler Colfax and Thomas A. Hen- 
dricks, each afterwards Vice-President of the United States; 
Michael G. Bright, afterwards United States Senator; 
Alvin P. Hovey, afterwards a general in the Civil War and 
governor of Indiana; and William McKee Dunn. 

The new constitution made possible what Caleb Mills 
and the friends of education who worked with him had so 
long tried to get, and the next legislature provided by law 
a system of free common schools which has slowly but con- 
stantly grown in usefulness and power. 

The coming of the missionary preachers resulted in the 
building of schoolhouses as well as churches. It was natural 
that the building of schools and churches should develop 
the spirit of neighborliness and change the frontier from a 
scattered multitude of independent settlers, each bent on 
his own pursuits, into a series of social communities all bent 
on making a society that would be good for the people as a 
whole. 

56. Religious life and leaders. The religious exercises of 
the pioneers were sometimes as dignified as church services 
are in modern times. More often they were suited to the 
rough, uncultivated ways of men and women who had had 
no opportunity for learning. Among these what the wor- 
ship lacked in dignity it made up in warmth. Camp-meet- 
ings brought together for weeks at a time many scores of 
families who lived in the woods where the circuit rider 
evangelist was preaching and services were held every day 
and late into the night. These were occasions of intense 
religious enthusiasm and the preacher, himself sometimes 
ignorant of everything but the Bible and human nature in 
the rough, exerted a powerful influence over the moral and 
the social life of the people. 

One of the Presbyterian ministers was " Father " John 
M. Dickey, of Washington, Indiana, who besides preaching 
ran a little farm, made and repaired shoes, wrote deeds, 
wills, and advertisements, surveyed and taught, and gave 



INDIANA BEFORE THE WAR 51 

good value for his yearly pay of eighty dollars. His wife 
made all the garments of a family of thirteen and entertained 
visitors innumerable. 

These preachers were natural leaders of men and made 
themselves felt in state politics also. Among them were 
many from New England and New York and Pennsylvania 
who had strong convictions regarding human slavery, and 
who sometimes created feeling by preaching against slavery 
and more often joined in the secret efforts that the enemies 
of slavery were making to help fugitive slaves to find their 
freedom in Canada. 

57. Anti-slavery sentiment is strong. The southern part 
of Indiana had been settled mainly by immigrants from the 
South, while the rest of the State was rilling up rapidly from 
the free States in the East. Even among the Southern set- 
tlers public opinion was sharply divided. The passage by 
Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 embittered the 
enemies of slavery, because they said it required them to 
become slave-hunters and to go out to capture unhappy 
fugitives and send them back to servitude. From various 
points on the Ohio River well-defined routes of escape were 
arranged, with stations where slaves could safely hide and 
evade pursuit. These routes of escape to Canada were 
popularly called the " Underground Railway." One of the 
most traveled ran from Lawrenceburg to Michigan by way 
of Richmond and Fort Wayne; another ran from Madison, 
New Albany, and Leavenworth to Michigan, through Co- 
lumbus, Indianapolis, Westfield, and South Bend; and the 
third ran from Evansville northeasterly, through Terre 
Haute and Crawfordsville, to join the second route at 
South Bend. 

One of the busiest of the " stations " on the Underground 
Railway was in the settlement of Friends at Newport (now 
Fountain City), near Richmond. Levi Coffin, an anti- 
slavery leader, was the moving spirit in keeping up the 
organization for hiding the runaway negroes in the day- 
time and providing them with food and clothes and the use 



52 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

of an occasional team so that they could move on at night 
to the next stopping-place. Not less than a hundred slaves 
were cared for by the Wayne County Friends each year at 
the Newport " station," where they were hidden in the hay- 
loft, or under the bed or in the attic of some faithful aboli- 
tionist whose conscience bade him break the Fugitive Slave 
Law because he believed it to be wrong. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What caused the failure of the plans to improve the waterways of the 
State? 

2. Describe the educational situation at the time Indiana became a 
State: (a) Constitutional provisions; (b) teachers; (c) schoolhouses; 
(d) pupils. 

3. Why were the constitutional provisions for free public education 
carried out slowly? 

4. Name the principal colleges and universities in Indiana to-day. Ex- 
plain how each was founded. 

5. What part did Indiana take in the anti-slavery movement? 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Dramatize "A day in school in the early history of Indiana." 

2. Write such a message as Caleb Mills might have sent to the state 
legislature regarding the need of free schools. 



CHAPTER VI 

WAR-TIME AND AFTER 

58. Immigration to central and northern Indiana. In- 
diana's pioneers had first come from the South, but as 
the State grew, families from the free States had come into 
the " New Purchase " until the people who hated human 
slavery began to outnumber those who held to the South- 
ern view. The National Road which the Government had 
undertaken to build from Maryland to Missouri brought a 
stream of emigrant wagons from the Eastern States through 
Richmond and Indianapolis to Terre Haute and beyond. 
Caravans of " prairie schooners " halted each night farther 
west and lighted the thousand-mile way with their cheery 
camp-fires. The pioneer child who wanted " to see the 
world " had only to run down to the road and watch the 
endless train of wagons move by. The talk of these enter- 
prising strangers interested him because it brought him 
news of the East, where the government was conducted 
and in whose cities business was carried on. The excite- 
ment of this daily experience was stirred by the thrill of the 
bugle as it announced the coming of the stagecoach with its 
splendid teams of spirited horses. And the daily march of 
the endless caravan and the stirring scene, when with the 
stage came news from abroad, brought to the settlers along 
the way a contact with the world and gave them day by 
day the opinions of all sorts of men. Most of these emi- 
grants were discussing politics and many of them were 
beginning to feel that the time was at hand when the 
growth of slavery must be stopped. From its earliest his- 
tory Indiana was the battle-ground of public opinion. 

59. Sentiment against slavery increases. With the en- 
forcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and the con- 



54 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

sequent pursuit and capture of runaway negroes in the free 
State of Indiana, men who had been indifferent before began 
to take sides. The successful operation of the Underground 
Railway in violation of the laws of Congress embittered the 
friends of slavery and encouraged its enemies to greater 
activity. 

In the presidential campaign of i860 the only issue was 
whether slavery should be made lawful in the Territories. 
The people began to fear that slavery might be made lawful 
in Indiana and throughout the North. Enough immigrants 
had come into the State since 1850 to give a majority to the 
Republicans, who were opposed to slavery, and assure the 
electoral vote of Indiana for Abraham Lincoln. But the 
vote was close. Indiana still had many citizens who sympa- 
thized with their Kentucky neighbors and who believed 
that the election of Lincoln meant the estrangement of 
the slave States and their secession from the L^nion, and 
who also were willing that the slave States should go in 
peace. 

The state election of i860 resulted in the choice of Henry 
S. Lane for governor and Oliver P. Morton for lieutenant- 
governor. Later in the winter Lane was made United States 
Senator and Morton became governor in his place. 

Oliver P. Morton had been an active Democratic politi- 
cian in Wayne County, and was a man of ability and cour- 
age, and a natural leader of men. But the feeling of Wayne 
County was strongly anti-slavery. For ten years its best 
people had been openly helping the runaway slaves in their 
escape to Canada, and Morton's sympathy for the miserable 
fugitives had compelled him to leave the old Democratic 
party and cast in his lot with the new organization under 
Lincoln's leadership. 

On February 11, 1861, on the way to his inauguration, 
Abraham Lincoln visited Indianapolis, and in a speech at 
the Bates House, then standing at Illinois and Washington 
Streets, made his first appeal to the people to stand for the 
Union in the struggle that was at hand. 



WAR-TIME AND AFTER 55 

60. The call for troops. On Friday, April 12, 1861, the 
telegraph brought the news to the anxious North that the 
flag over Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, had been fired 
upon by the guns of South Carolina. All day Saturday 
men stood about the streets, too hurt to speak, and waited 
for the news. At last came the word that all expected, 
" Sumter has fallen." Then came the President's call for 
seventy-five thousand men. As the dumb crowds stood 
about the bulletin boards, they looked up to the flag over- 
head and saw there something they had never seen before, 
the soul of a nation in trouble. 

Before the call came for volunteers, Governor Morton 
telegraphed to President Lincoln, " On behalf of the State 
of Indiana, I tender to you for the defense of the nation, 
and to uphold the authority of the Government, ten thou- 
sand men." 

61. Oliver P. Morton, " the war governor." The Civil 
War had begun. For four years, at the State House, or at 
the battle front, or at Washington, wherever he was most 
needed, Oliver P. Morton, " the war governor," watched 
over the Indiana boys in the army as tenderly as if they were 
his own. Indiana soldiers were in every battle and in every 
hospital in the South, and wherever fighting was going on 
or men needed sympathy or care, Morton's agents were at 
hand to report their needs to the governor and see that they 
were cared for. When the nights grew cold in the West 
Virginia mountains in the fall of 1861, Morton went on to 
Washington to secure overcoats for their protection. The 
day after the battle of Shiloh he chartered Mississippi 
River steamers to bring home the wounded and sent to the 
field sixty surgeons and more than three hundred nurses. 
When prisoners from the Confederate armies were brought 
to Indianapolis in February, 1862, he gave especial care to 
their comfort, engaging efficient hospital service for them 
and equipping a bakery so as to give them home-made food, 
and calling upon the citizens to remember that the prisoners 
" were but a few months ago friends and neighbors " for 



56 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

whom " we should bear a memory of the past and add no 
bitterness to their hard fate." Prisoners from the South 
were thus cared for through a bitter winter at Lafayette 
and Terre Haute and at Camp Morton in Indianapolis. 
What these unhappy men suffered in their poverty and ex- 
posure to cold would be hard to realize now. 

In time a strong sentiment of hostility to carrying on the 
war grew up, and a legislature was elected in 1862 which 
was determined to interfere with the " war governor's " 
plans by discouraging men from enlisting, advising soldiers 
to desert, and refusing to provide the governor with money 
to keep the men at the front. But Morton was not to be 
discouraged. Relief associations were organized in every 
part of the State. When a regiment came home a warm 
lunch awaited it at the state line at Jeffersonville, and a 
royal welcome was provided all along the way until the 
men had scattered to their homes. Day after day as sol- 
diers going or returning passed through the streets, the 
women were organized to bring home food to them and 
watch after their comfort. When the unfriendly legislature 
adjourned without providing money to pay the enormous 
war bills, and even allowed the interest on the state debt 
to default, Governor Morton borrowed the money on his 
own credit. 

62. John Morgan's raid. The most exciting week in all 
the war-time was in July, 1863, when General John Morgan 
crossed the Ohio at Brandenburg, Kentucky, at the head of 
about two thousand Confederate soldiers on horseback and 
swept on through Corydon and Salem and Vernon and into 
Ohio. His hope was that the Indianians who had sympa- 
thized with the South would rally to his support, but Indi- 
ana disappointed him. Before he had reached the Ohio 
state line sixty-five thousand new recruits had turned out 
in arms ready to fight him, but they were unable to discover 
where he was. The effort to separate Indiana from the 
Union failed, and the effect of Morgan's raid was greatly to 
strengthen the loyalty of the people of the State. 



WAR-TIME AND AFTER 57 

63. The soldiers return from the war. Lee's surrender at 
Appomattox in April, 1865, was the beginning of the end. 
In summer and fall the last of Indiana's 151 regiments be- 
gan to come home, and one regiment after another passed 
through the capital. They were greeted with a salute from 
the cannon in the early morning, and after a breakfast, 
provided by the women of Indianapolis, they marched down 
Washington Street through cheering crowds to the State 
House, where they listened to war songs and a speech by the 
war governor and then turned homeward. Most of the sol- 
diers were boys. They had gone through hardships and 
dangers together for love of their country, and they came 
home changed by their rude experiences. In their years of 
camp-life and on the march, following the flag, they had 
learned in how many ways a man may serve his country, 
and they came home with an interest in public affairs they 
had not known before. 

64. Indiana in national politics. As Indiana had been a 
battle-ground of public opinion before the war, when the 
slavery question kept men bitterly divided, the problems 
of government which arose out of the war and later, kept the 
men of Indiana, most of whom had been soldiers, alert and 
full of political interest. Just as Indiana had furnished more 
than her share of soldiers to the armies of the Union, she 
now furnished more orators and public men than any other 
State. Within her borders were fought the fiercest of all 
the political battles. Division of political sentiment had 
been a distinguishing characteristic from the days of the 
earliest settlements when the first great contest ended in 
18 16 with the admission of Indiana into the Union as a free 
State. The pioneer emigrants from Virginia and the Caro- 
linas and those who later came from New York and New 
England differed in their ideas of government and of poli- 
tics, and the two classes of settlers were so nearly equal in 
number that Indiana's vote on national questions was al- 
ways close, and in her national political campaigns, the 
most persuasive of all the political speakers were sent to 



58 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

Indiana to win the narrow majority that was always to be 
had by the party whose arguments were strongest and 
whose organization was most efficient. 

Any Indiana boy who attended the barbecues and rallies 
and wigwam gatherings of the fall campaigns grew up under 
the influence of such orators as Thomas A. Hendricks, 
Joseph E. McDonald, Daniel W. Voorhees, Walter Q. 
Gresham, Oliver P. Morton, Benjamin Harrison, Albert G. 
Porter, and John L. Griffiths, from his own State, and from 
abroad, Stephen A. Douglas, Roscoe Conkling, James G. 
Blaine, Carl Schurz, and Horace Greeley. In later times, 
he listened to William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, 
William Jennings Bryan, and other modern orators. 

Indiana's vote was to be reckoned with, and to gain it the 
great political parties nominated Indiana candidates for 
Vice-President and for President, and turned constantly to 
Indiana for leadership. Following the Civil War the Indiana 
nominees for Vice-President were Schuyler Colfax in 1868, 
Thomas A. Hendricks in 1876 and 1884, William H. English 
in 1880, Charles W. Fairbanks in 1900, John W. Kern in 
1908, and Thomas R. Marshall in 1912. In 1888 Benjamin 
Harrison, of Indianapolis, was nominated by the Republi- 
cans and elected to the Presidency. 

65. The Harrison campaigns of 1840 and 1888. The 
campaign which resulted in the election of Benjamin Harri- 
son as President aroused an interest in Indiana that no 
presidential struggle had stirred since the election in 1840 
of his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, the first gov- 
ernor of Indiana Territory. The elder Harrison's services 
in Congress in behalf of the Territory, and his wisdom and 
ability as governor at old Vincennes, had won him univer- 
sal respect, while his brilliant career as an Indian fighter, 
particularly in the battle of Tippecanoe in 181 1, made him 
a popular idol in the State where his greatest successes had 
been won. The log cabin and the coon skin were adopted 
as emblems of the pioneer candidate. During the three 
months' struggle the first settler and the oldest inhabitant 



WAR-TIME AND AFTER 59 

became the most important of all the people. George 
Rogers Clark, then past eighty years old, was made chair- 
man of the first big meeting at Indianapolis. The State 
went mad for " Tippecanoe and Tyler too." 

In the contest of 1888 the old men who had voted for 
William Henry Harrison forty-eight years before formed 
" Tippecanoe Clubs " and turned out to pay their respects 
to " Old Tippecanoe's " grandson. The " grandfather's 
hat," a giant beaver hat of the early day, was the Harri- 
son emblem this time, and walls and windows were adorned 
with pictures of the pioneer log cabin. Indiana felt some of 
the same pride in her candidate that had been hers in the 
presidential campaign of 1840, though the contest was a 
close one, and Benjamin Harrison's support was drawn to 
him by his ability rather than by that sort of personal popu- 
larity which made William Henry Harrison's followers so 
loyal in their support. Visiting delegations, thousands each 
day, came from various parts of the United States to greet 
the Hoosier candidate and hear his brief but brilliant 
speeches in University Park at Indianapolis. 

66. The Spanish-American War. The breaking-out of 
war with Spain in 1898 found Indiana's young men eager to 
enlist, as they had been in the Mexican War and in the Civil 
War. Thousands tendered their services and were rejected 
because they were not needed. Seventy- three hundred and 
one soldiers of the organized militia were accepted, out of all 
of whom only a single battery, the 27th, succeeded in getting 
into active service. General Lew Wallace, who had served 
brilliantly in the Mexican War and in the Civil War and had 
brought honor to his country as foreign minister and as 
author, sought a commission in the field in the hope of render- 
ing, in his old age, military service in a third of his country's 
wars, but was disappointed. General Henry W. Lawton, of 
Fort Wayne, made a brilliant record in the Spanish-American 
War, and died in battle in the Philippine Islands in 1899. 

67. Interest in industrial education — Purdue University. 
The return of the soldiers in 1865 gave the same impetus 



60 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

to industry in Indiana that it gave to her political life. 
Railways were built and trade was developed and cities be- 
gan to grow out of all proportion to the country communi- 
ties. And with the renewed prosperity there began to ap- 
pear a new and a deeper interest in education. 

One of the first laws passed after the war was the accept- 
ance of the gift by Congress of a generous grant to provide 
a college where scientific agriculture and technical and 
mechanic arts should be taught. This was in 1865. Other 
gifts were made by John Purdue, and by the people of La- 
fayette and of Tippecanoe County, and in 1874 Purdue 
University was opened at Lafayette. 

68. The State Normal School. The same legislature 
which provided for state training in mechanics and agricul- 
ture at Purdue University put into effect in 1865 one of the 
plans for perfecting the school system which Caleb Mills 
had advocated so earnestly twenty years before, and en- 
acted a law for the creation of a school to prepare teachers 
for the common schools of Indiana. Five years later the 
Indiana State Normal School was opened at Terre Haute 
and at once won for itself a place of importance and au- 
thority in the school system of the State. 

Education in Indiana is no longer a thing of chance. 
The time has come when only educated men and women 
are permitted to teach, and when careful training in the 
science of teaching is required of every teacher. The early 
common schools commanded the service of many men and 
women of devoted scholarship and gave to the children a 
contact with cultivated people and an acquaintance with 
books that make real education. With the establishment 
of technical training at Purdue and of normal instruction 
at Terre Haute, the popular idea of education has broad- 
ened. The State has undertaken to give more than book 
learning to the child, and in the modern school system it 
trains him to use eye and hand as well as mind, and to 
make of himself a loyal citizen as well as a producer of 
things worth while. 



WAR-TIME AND AFTER 61 



QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 

i. On an outline map of the United States indicate the three main 
routes by which the pioneers came into Indiana. 

2. A dramatization. 

Characters: 

An Indiana boy or girl standing by the National Road. 
Other boys and girls representing those coming from New Eng- 
land, from Maryland, from Virginia and Kentucky. 
Conversations showing views on slavery, reasons for emigrating, 
and conditions of life in the East and in Indiana. 

3. In what different ways did Governor Morton prove himself a great 
"war governor"? 

4. Compare the two Harrison campaigns. 

5. How did the State show its interest in education at the close of the 
Civil War? 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Write a paragraph showing why Indiana became an anti-slavery 
State. 

2. Write a paragraph on one of the men mentioned in the section, "In- 
diana in national politics." (Let each member of the class select a 
man to write about.) 

3. Write briefly regarding General Lew Wallace or General Henry W. 
Lawton. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE HOOSIER 

69. How the "Hoosier" was named. Some time in the 
wilderness period, before schools were common and before 
the fashions of polite society had found their way into Indi- 
ana, the world estimated the people of the State by the 
impression made upon it by the flatboatman and river 
roustabout. Tourists along the Ohio River came in contact 
with men of rough dress and rougher manners, whose lack 
of polish justified describing them by the use of an old-time 
slang term in common use in the South, and when they told 
of adventures along the Indiana frontier they are said to 
have spoken of the uncouth and unlettered pioneers of 
Indiana as " hoosiers." The word " hoosier " had always 
meant an ignorant and uncultivated person, and the kind 
of Indianian of the period who appeared along the river 
front, working his flatboat for the river trade and leading 
the hardest of outdoor lives, came to be called " hoosier " 
by his superior neighbors in Kentucky and Ohio. Just 
when or how the name came into general use is not known, 
but, before 1833, it had been accepted by the people of 
Indiana, in the spirit of fun, no doubt, and, by common 
consent and almost at once, Indiana became the " Hoosier " 
State. It was thirty years and more before the cultivated 
people of the East discovered that the Hoosiers were not 
really ignorant and uncouth. In about the same period of 
time the people of Indiana began to discover for themselves 
that Hoosier has grown at last to mean something wholly 
different. A Richmond editor, named John Finley, who 
printed some of the earliest verse written in Indiana, pub- 
lished in 1833 a poem called " The Hoosier's Nest." It was 
a description of the log cabin in the Indiana wilderness, 
poor enough as poetry, perhaps, but a real picture of life 
as he saw it. 



THE HOOSIER 63 

"The stranger stooped to enter in, 
The entrance closing with a pin, 
And manifested strong desire 
To seat him by the log-heap fire, 
Where half a dozen Hoosieroons, 
With mush and milk, tincups and spoons, 
White heads, bare feet, and dirty faces, 
Seemed much inclined to keep their places. 



Invited shortly to partake 

Of venison, milk, and johnny-cake, 

The stranger made a hearty meal 

And glances round the room would steal ; 

One side was lined with skins of 'varmints,' 

The other spread with divers garments; 

Dried pumpkins overhead were strung, 

Where venison hams in plenty hung. 

Two rifles placed above the door, 

Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor. 

In short, the domicile was rife 

With specimens of Hoosier life." 

Finley wrote other verses that won for him the name of 
poet laureate of early Indiana, but his title to fame is that 
he introduced the Hoosier to literature and fixed upon 
Indiana a nickname that her children are at last proud to 
bear. 

A New Orleans newspaper in 1839 described the " sim- 
plicity of character and independence of the Hoosier " who 
came to that interesting city to sell his cargo of Indiana 
products: — 

We do love to see a Hoosier roll along the levee with the pro- 
ceeds of the cargo of his flatboat in his pocket. It is the wages of 
industry. See with what pity he regards those who are confined 
to the unchanging monotony of a city life, and how he despises 
the uniformity of dress. He has just donned a new blue dress coat 
with flowered gilt buttons. His new trousers look rather short 
for the present fashion, but he glories in still sporting the same 
unpolished big boots and the woolen, round- topped, wide-leafed 
hat in which he set out from home. The Hoosier seems to say, "A 
life in the woods for me," and his happy and independent life 
attests the wisdom of his choice. 



64 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

It would interest every patriotic American if he could see 
a picture of the Hoosier boy, Abraham Lincoln, nineteen 
years old, and six feet four inches tall, as he left his flatboat, 
with its cargo of Spencer County pork and grain, at the 
river front and wandered wide-eyed through the strange 
French city of New Orleans and watched for the first time 
the slave market whose tragedies made a life-long impres- 
sion on his sympathetic heart. 

70. Distinguished Hoosiers. How intelligence and schol- 
arship became general, and how in less than a hundred 
years Indiana inventions and reforms and Indiana litera- 
ture found a place among the best products of American 
civilization, can be understood by any student of Indiana 
history. 

During the century great things have been done by men 
and women born in Indiana or taught within the State. 
It was a Brookville boy, James B. Eads, who in after years 
first threw a steel bridge across the Mississippi River at 
St. Louis and controlled its current at the Gulf of Mexico 
so that ocean steamers could travel in safety to New Or- 
leans. It was an Indianapolis telegrapher, Thomas A. Edi- 
son, sending dispatches for seventy-five dollars a month 
while still a boy, who began as an operator to devise im- 
provements in telegraphy and in later life discovered some 
of the greatest secrets of electricity. It was a pioneer of 
South Bend, James Oliver, who discovered, after many 
years of study and experiment, how to make a plow of 
chilled cast iron that would do better work at less cost than 
a plow made of any other material and whose invention 
has made farmers the world over send to Indiana for their 
plows. It was a Portland boy, Elwood Haynes, who was 
the pioneer in making the first commercial automobile. One 
of the earliest leaders in scientific charity and the prevention 
of pauperism and crime was an Indianapolis preacher and 
social worker, Oscar C. McCulloch, and he was followed 
by Charles R. Henderson, of Lafayette, and William Alex- 
ander Johnson, of Fort Wayne, and Albion Fellows Bacon, 



THE HOOSIER 65 

of Evansville, and Amos Butler, a native of Brookville. 
Natural science has had discoverers and investigators 
among its Indiana followers in David Dale Owen, the geolo- 
gist from New Harmony, John M. Coulter, long a teacher 
of botany at Hanover and Wabash Colleges and president 
of Indiana University, and David Starr Jordan, college 
president and student of fishes. Besides these, John Muir, 
a young Scotchman injured in an Indianapolis factory in 
1867, was driven by his injury to a life out of doors and to 
the study of botany before he found his way to the Pacific 
Coast to study glaciers and write books. Other scientists 
of Indiana have been Harvey W. Wiley, the chemist, one- 
time teacher in the public schools and at Hanover and 
Butler Colleges, and John N. Hurty, the sanitarian. 

The beauty of the Indiana landscape and the interest of 
Hoosier life and character gave to William M. Chase and 
Hiram Powers and to John T. McCutcheon, student of art 
in Purdue University, and to Fred C. Yohn, an Indiana- 
polis boy, an interest in art that has enabled them to bring 
distinction to their native State. To this list should be 
added Janet Scudder, sculptor, a native of Terre Haute. 

The first of Indiana's judges, appointed to the Supreme 
Court in 181 6, published for the use of the bench and bar 
a collection of the opinions of the court, which under the 
name of Blackford's Reports found its way into the great 
law libraries of England and America and to this day is re- 
ferred to as authority for courts to follow. 

In 1840 Henry Ward Beecher, in a little church on the 
Governor's Circle, was preaching sermons that drew the 
attention of the East to Indianapolis, and the publication 
of his first volume, Lectures to Young Men, introduced one 
of the first of Indiana's writers to the literary world. 
Beecher's reputation as an author was overshadowed by his 
fame as an orator. Beecher was more than author and ora- 
tor, for he taught boys and girls and edited the Indiana 
Farmer and bore an active part in the social life of the com- 
munity. It is no small part of his claim to distinction that 



66 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

he was one of Indiana's first writers, and one of the first to 
prove to the outside world that Indiana was not wholly 
illiterate. 

71. The Hoosier literature. It is in literature quite as 
much as in art and science and politics and war that Indi- 
ana has won a place for itself in the front rank of America's 
men and women of mark. The roll of writers from Indiana 
is too long to include them all, but among them mention 
may be made of Forceythe Wilson, poet; Lew Wallace, 
author of Ben Hur; Edward Eggleston, author of The 
Hoosier Schoolmaster, and his gifted brother, George Cary 
Eggleston; Maurice Thompson and Will H. Thompson, 
poets and scholars; Sarah T. Bolton; Joaquin Miller, the 
California poet, who was born in the Whitewater Valley; 
Lyman Abbott, who preached at Terre Haute during the 
period of the Civil War. Other writers identified with Indi- 
ana are Maurice Francis Egan, Charles Warren Stoddard, 
John James Piatt, James Baldwin, Charles Major, Wil- 
liam Dudley Foulke, Robert Underwood Johnson, Annie 
Fellows Johnston, Jacob Piatt Dunn, James A. Wood- 
burn, Daniel Wait Howe, Charles Richard Williams, Mere- 
dith Nicholson, Booth Tarkington, William Vaughn Moody, 
Theodore Dreiser, George Ade, George Barr McCutcheon, 
Gene Stratton Porter, and Mary Hanna Krout. 

72. James Whitcomb Riley. While the Civil War was 
in progress there was growing up in Greenfield, on the old 
National Road, a white-haired boy, son of a soldier, who, 
as he watched his father's comrades throng to the front in 
response to Lincoln's call for troops, became saturated 
with the spirit of Americanism, as many other boys did 
who were too young to enlist. This boy in later years gave 
expression to the feeling that the fife and drum aroused in 
the boy heart, and wrote for other boys and girls the poem 
Old Glory. Other influences moulded the boy's character 
and filled him with an interest in human nature as he 
found it in the average countryman of Indiana, which he 
expressed in the peculiar Hoosier speech. These average 



THE HOOSIER 67 

Hoosiers he watched as they traveled the National Road 
past his father's house, or as he met them at the county 
seat on Saturday afternoons or in the little country school 
where his devoted teacher, Lee O. Harris, encouraged him 
to write them into verse. Because he understood real peo- 
ple and put their human nature, generous and kind and 
good-humored as it was, into his writings, he accomplished 
two great things: he found the American people ready to 
listen to his songs and read his books and so became a famous 
poet; and he introduced his own home folks, the Hoosiers, 
to the American people. The boy is grown up, but he is 
not grown old, and his name is James Whitcomb Riley. 

73. Influence of the teachers. Most of the men and wo- 
men who have added to Indiana's literary fame have come 
into prominence during the past thirty years. In nearly 
every instance the place where they have grown to matur- 
ity has been in a cultivated community, where there were 
inspiring teachers and where people led cultivated, quiet 
lives and enjoyed the reading of books. The New Harmony 
settlement in Indiana's territorial days built schools and 
libraries and brought to Indiana men and women who cared 
for literature. In Vevay and in Brookville and Crawfords- 
ville and Bloomington, and wherever there were settle- 
ments, cultivated men gathered and gave to the neighbor- 
hood the benefit of their books and of their scholarship. 
The colleges were sending out this kind of people, and as 
better teachers were trained in the normal schools and in 
the colleges, the schools awakened the spirit of scholarship. 
Individual teachers did more to bring scholarship to the 
people than the great institutions of learning did. Such 
was Lee O. Harris's training of Riley, and Julia Dumont's 
teaching of the Eggleston brothers at Vevay. Such a 
teacher was John I. Morrison, of the old Salem Academy, 
and such have been Caleb Mills, of Wabash College, Cath- 
arine Merrill, of Indianapolis, Samuel K. Hoshour, May 
Wright Sewall, John Clark Ridpath, of Asbury University, 
Alembert W. Brayton, and many more. 



68 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

74. How a community gets its character. It is the belief 
of students of history that a community owes its character 
to the pioneers who founded it and to the leaders who in 
later years guided the thought and the life of its people. 
The pioneers of Indiana were American-born, soldiers of 
the War of Independence and their sons. They were men of 
enterprise and courage and patriotism. Among them in all 
parts of the State were scholars whose taste of college life 
had not robbed them of the spirit of adventure. It was to 
be expected that such founders of a State would provide 
libraries and schools and colleges for the training of their 
children and, as they were able, give generously to the en- 
dowment of the colleges they built. Such benefactors were 
Williamson Dunn, who gave land to three Indiana col- 
leges, and later on, Ovid Butler, John Purdue, and Wash- 
ington C. DePauw. Equally public-spirited were the early 
educational missionaries Asbury and Simpson and Mills 
and Hovey, who gave the best they had to the cause of 
education in Indiana. The result of it all is a State whose 
people are rightly proud of its scholarship and of its achieve- 
ments in all the activities that call for the use of trained 
minds. 

75. The Indiana school system. The Indiana school sys- 
tem consists of the common schools, governed by township 
trustees and trustees of town and city boards chosen by the 
people of the several communities, Indiana University at 
Bloomington and Purdue University at Lafayette, and the 
State Normal School at Terre Haute for the training of 
common-school teachers. The system is guided by a state 
board of education of thirteen members. Of this board the 
governor appoints six. The remaining seven are the super- 
intendent of public instruction, chosen by the people of the 
State, the superintendent of schools in the three cities hav- 
ing the largest number of children of school age, and the 
presidents of the State Normal School and of Purdue and 
Indiana Universities. The schools are supported by local 
and general taxation and by the interest from the state 



THE HOOSIER 69 

school fund. Special schools are maintained for boys at 
Plainfield, for girls at Clermont, for the feeble-minded at 
Fort Wayne, for the deaf, and for the blind, at Indianapolis. 

76. The government of the State. The political govern- 
ment of the State has changed very little since the adoption 
of the present constitution in 1851. 

77. The governor and his duties. The governor and most 
administrative officers are elected by the people upon nomi- 
nations made by the political parties. There are many ad- 
ministrative boards appointed by the governor. Among 
these are the trustees of the state institutions for the care of 
the insane and the epileptic and the treatment of tubercu- 
losis; the homes for soldiers and sailors at Lafayette, and 
their orphans at Knightstown; the prisons for women and 
for men, the reformatory for young men. The governor also 
appoints commissions for various public purposes, the pub- 
lic service commission, which regulates the telegraph, tele- 
phone, traction, gas, water, and lighting business of the 
State ; the public library commission, to maintain traveling 
libraries furnished by the State, state boards of finance, 
accounting, and taxation, of forestry, of health, of charities, 
of pardons, of medical registration, of dentistry, of phar- 
macy, of registration and examination of nurses, and of 
embalmers. The governor also appoints the officers of the 
militia and countless minor officials, and fills all vacancies in 
state offices, except in the legislature. 

The governor enforces the laws of the State and keeps the 
peace. When the legislature is in session he signs or vetoes 
the bills enacted. The effect of his veto is to require the bill 
to be passed a second time before it can become effective. 
He has the power of pardoning persons convicted of crimes 
and misdemeanors. His term is four years. 

78. The legislative department. The laws are enacted by 
the general assembly, consisting of one hundred representa- 
tives and fifty senators. The representatives choose their 
speaker, or president. The president of the senate is the 
lieutenant-governor, chosen by the people of the State at 



70 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

the time the governor is elected. The members of the two 
houses represent districts of the State apportioned according 
to population. The senator serves for four years and the 
representative for two. Sessions are held for sixty days, 
beginning in January every two years. 

79. The judicial department. Laws are interpreted and 
controversies are determined by the courts. These are of 
many kinds and grades: in the various townships, justices of 
the peace, for unimportant controversies; in the cities, police 
courts to try minor offenses and violations of local ordi- 
nances; in the counties, the circuit courts, and where the 
population is dense and the litigation is heavy, additional 
special courts, superior courts, criminal courts, probate 
courts, and juvenile courts. The appeals from these local 
courts are taken to two courts of last resort, which meet at 
Indianapolis, the appellate court and the supreme court. 

Judges, except in the supreme court and the circuit court, 
serve for four years. Supreme and circuit judges serve for 
six years. All are chosen by popular vote, upon political 
nominations. 

80. County administration. Each county, to regulate its 
local affairs, chooses a board of three commissioners, who 
conduct its business, look after its property and roads and 
bridges, and represent the State in the licensing of liquor 
dealers. In the spending of public funds they are supervised 
by a county council. Both commissioners and council are 
elected. 

The people elect most of the county administrative of- 
ficers. These are sheriff, auditor, clerk of the circuit court, 
treasurer, recorder, coroner, and surveyor. The trustees of 
the several townships in the county elect a county super- 
intendent of schools. 

81. Township administration. The township officers are 
trustee, assessor, constable, road supervisor, justice of the 
peace, and the advisory board. The advisory board super- 
vises township expenditures just as the county council does. 

The chief township officer is the trustee, who administers 



THE HOOSIER 71 

the township business under the supervision of the advisory 
board and in a general way looks after the business affairs 
of the rural schools, the maintenance of the roads, and cares 
for the poor. 

82. City government. Cities are incorporated according 
to laws which differ according to the size of the city. In a 
general way their affairs are governed by a chief executive 
or mayor, a legislative body or council, and a city judge, all 
elected by the people. 

83. Towns. Communities too small to be incorporated 
as cities are organized into towns, if the inhabitants so de- 
sire. The town affairs are managed by a board of from 
three to seven trustees, and its other officers are the clerk, 
treasurer, and marshal. The marshal keeps the peace, as 
the police do in the cities. 

84. Taxation. Local taxes are assessed by the township 
assessor to meet the levy laid by the township trustee, the 
city council, and the county board. Besides the local taxes 
the general assembly levies a general state tax and the 
school trustees in the various townships, towns, and cities 
levy a special school tax. 

85. Law enforcement. The maintenance of order in the 
State at large is entrusted by law to the county sheriff and 
in the cities to the mayor, who enforces the laws through 
his proper boards and the city police. 



QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 

1. What is the origin of the term "Hoosiers" as applied to the people 
of Indiana? 

2. Describe the Indiana school system. Who were some of its founders? 

3. The government of the State is divided into three departments — 
executive, legislative, and judicial. Of what does each department 
consist? Compare with the government of the United States. 

4. Who are the county officers in the county in which you live? What 
are the duties of each? 

5. Who are the township officers (or if you live in a city the city officers) 
in the township in which you live? What are the duties of each? 



72 THE HISTORY OF INDIANA 

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS 

1. Write a paragraph on the life of one of the men mentioned in the 
section, "Distinguished Hoosiers." 

2. Write a paragraph on the writings of one of the authors mentioned 
in the section, "The Hoosier Literature." 

3. As a review of the history of Indiana write an analysis of the subject 
"What has made Indiana great?" Write a paragraph on each of the 
topics of your analysis. 

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Aley, Robert J., and Aley, Max. Story of Indiana. 

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The Underground Railway. 

Conklin, Julia S. Young People's History of Indiana. Sentinel Printing Co., 
Indianapolis. 

Cottman, Geo. S., and Hyman, Max R. Centennial History of Indiana. In- 
dianapolis. 

Dillon, John B. . History of Indiana from its Earliest Exploration to 1816. 
Bingham, Indianapolis. (Out of print.) 

Dudley, Robert {pseud.). In My Youth. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. 

Dunn, Jacob P. Greater Indianapolis. 2 vols. 

Indiana: A Redemption from Slavery. Houghton Mifflin Company. 

True Indian Stories. Sentinel Printing Co., Indianapolis. 

Eggleston, Edward. Circuit Rider. Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Eggleston, George C. First of the Hoosiers. Drexel Biddle, Philadelphia. 

English, Wm. H. Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio. Bobbs- 
Merrill, Indianapolis. 

Esarey, Logan. History of Indiana from its Exploration to 1850. Stewart, In- 
dianapolis. 

Foulke, Wm. D. Life of Oliver P. Morton. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. 

Hall, Baynard R. The New Purchase. (Out of print.) 

Howe, Daniel W. Making a Capital in the Wilderness. Ind. Hist. Soc, Pub., 
vol. iv, no. 4. 

Indiana Historical Society. Publications, vols. 1, 11, in, iv. 

Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History (from 1905 to date). Indiana University. 

Julian, G. W. Political Recollections 1840-72. Jansen, Chicago. 

Levering, Julia H. Historic Indiana. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

Lockwood, George B. New Harmony Communities. 

McCulloch, Hugh. Men and Measures of Haifa Century. Chas. Scribner's Sons. 

Merrill, Catherine. Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union. Merrill, In- 
dianapolis. 

Merrill, Samuel {ed.). Indiana Gazetteer. 3d ed. (Out of print.) 

Moore, Edward E. Century of Indiana. American Book Co. 

Nicholson, Meredith. Hoosiers. Macmillan. 

Nowland, John H. B. Early Reminiscences of Indianapolis. 

Riley, James W. Complete Works. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis. 

Smith, Oliver H. Early Indiana Trials and Sketches. Moore, Cincinnati. 

Stickney, Ida S. Pioneer Indianapolis. Civic Studies of Indianapolis, no. I. 

Sulgrove, Berry R. History of Indianapolis and Marion County. 

Thompson, Maurice. Stories of Indiana. American Book Co. 




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